Shards of glass
by prenatural
Summary: Team RWBY is forced to watch alternative realities focused mainly on their leader, Ruby Rose, and Jaune Arc. You know how it goes.
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

Ruby woke up with the strange feeling that she was floating. To tell the truth, it wasn't the first time something like this had happened to her. When she was little she used to wake up half dizzy, not even knowing what was up and what was down.

However, when she opened her eyes she realized that it was not a simple illusion created because she had not yet fully awakened. It was real.

Her bed was nowhere to be found. She was floating in a black void, surrounded by her team members, who were still asleep. Despite the darkness that reigned, she saw them with complete clarity. Because it was not darkness, she realized, but absence.

Ruby stood up slowly. She didn't understand what was going on, but at least she had her baby at her waist. And her cloak. That made her feel better.

Until she realized that didn't make any sense either. Because she had gone to bed in her pajamas, like everyone else, and no matter how much she loved her scythe and her cloak, she always left them on one side of the bed. But now she had them on her again. And she was wearing her huntress outfit, not her pajamas.

Realizing what that meant, Ruby's first reaction was to blush, but it didn't take her long to turn pale and tremble with impotent rage.

_Someone undressed me, changed my clothes and put all this on me. As if they were pieces of a toy._

And yes, just her. The others were still in their pajamas.

Ruby shook her head vigorously.

In the middle of a situation like this, that was the least of it. In spite of everything. Part of her wanted to believe that this was a dream and she would soon wake up in her bed, warm and safe, with nothing out of the ordinary happening. But she wasn't a child. She knew the truth.

Dreams weren't so... realistic, for lack of a better word. Although nothing of what had happened to them made sense, it had happened. That was clear to her.

It has to be the Semblance of some pervert. It didn't help at all, but that idea made her feel better. Because it made sense. Because it meant that a solution could be found, no matter how much it didn't seem possible.

Ruby took a deep breath. She summoned up her courage.

It wasn't the first time she had to deal with unwanted attention. Thanks to her genes, her breasts had grown quite quickly. To be more exact, by the age of eleven they had already grown to a considerable size. And since then she had been chased by the stares of unsavory men. The kind of people who would harm children without hesitation to get what they wanted.

This was not the same thing, but it was close enough. And like the other times, she wouldn't let herself be intimidated, deceived.

She wouldn't allow the enemy to lay a hand on her, whoever he was. Her nor her friends. Before that... Before that... Ruby placed a hand on Crescent Rose. He squeezed it until her knuckles turned white, until her hand began to tremble.

She grabbed Yang by the shoulders and shook her to wake her up. After all, she was the strongest of them all. And she was just as determined to get her into trouble as she was to get her out of them.

"Yang, come on! Wake up! Wake up!" She tried to keep the fear out of her voice. In spite of everything.

It looked like she wouldn't wake up, but Yang suddenly opened her eyes, got up so quickly and with such force that she almost knocked her down into the ground.

"Ruby! Ruby! What's going on?"

Yang looked into the darkness around them.

"I need your help," said Ruby.

"This... Oh. Oh, gods, tell me this isn't a sex dream. I'm not that depraved!

Ruby slapped her. Without a second thought. And why lie: she enjoyed it.

"Fuck." Yang put one hand on her red cheek. This isn't a dream, is it?

"No. It's not."

"What the hell happened to us?

"That's what I'd like to know."

Ruby spun, turning around, and unfolded Crescent Rose.

She thought she had heard something. One whisper. Footsteps. Whatever. But she had made a mistake, she realized that it had been nothing more than the wild beating of her heart. She gritted her teeth. She didn't want to cry here. Didn't want to collapse.

_I'm supposed to lead them_, she said to herself. But the thought sounded false. It sounded like a mockery towards herself.

Yang woke up the others.

"This is a joke, isn't it?" That was Weiss' reaction. And her voice sounded louder than usual when she was angry. Of course. "Very funny. Haha, haha."

Ruby rolled her eyes. She loved Weiss, seriously. But sometimes she wanted nothing more than to push her head under the water to make him shut up for a while. Like now. One of her tantrums was the least they needed when they were all in grave danger.

"Come on," Yang said, "you know I wouldn't joke about something like this."

"Yes, of course." Her sarcasm couldn't be more evident.

Weiss turned and blindly groped, she assumed, for the light switch.

"Don't go too far away," she said.

"Shut up, Ruby. I'm sure this nonsense was your idea."

There was a click. In the middle of the emptiness now shone a spotlight, as if they were on an invisible stage. And in the circle of light appeared, one after the other, wooden chairs.

Four chairs. The message was clear. Although she didn't like one bit.

Weiss, of course, stared open-mouthed.

"How did you do that? This joke is going too far. Seriously, it's not funny."

"I didn't do anything!" Ruby replied, "Neither me, nor my sister, nor... Hey, Blake, can you do that with your Semblance? You know, create something other than clones of yourself? Because that would be so cool."

"No. I can't."

"Shame."

"Ruby, focus," said Yang.

"I'm focused," she replied as she sat in one of the chairs at random. Seeing that the others weren't doing the same, she turned her head and looked over her shoulder at them. "What are you waiting for?"

"Do you think that's a good idea?" Blake asked.

"It's the only one we have. Unless you've come up with one."

Her team took a seat, unable to fight her infallible logic.

Ruby leaned back in her chair and smiled despite the situation. She loved the moments when she really felt like the leader of Team RWBY and not like their mascot.

A man appeared in front of them.

His beard made it clear that he hadn't shaved for at least three or four months. He wore a black trench coat... and a fedora hat. Ruby bit her lower lip. She knew it could be a serious mistake, but as soon as she saw him the whole feeling that they were in danger evaporated. Now she wanted to laugh at his ridiculous appearance.

Apparently the other three didn't share her amusement.

"As always," the man said, "Ruby turns out to be the smartest of the four of you."

A chill ran down her back.

The sense of danger had returned stronger than before. He had spoken her name as if savoring it. As if he wanted... to savor her. And it was so. She had to be his target.

She looked for Yang with her gaze and hand, wrapping and squeezing one of her older sister's hands.

"So you're the son of a bitch who brought us to this place," Yang said. Her eyes had become red as blood. "Come here, big guy. I'm going to give you such a kick in the balls that they'll fly out of your mouth."

"And how is that possible, if you can't even get out of that chair?"

Yang tried immediately. And she failed. Of course, the result was the same for Weiss, Blake and her. They were trapped. In more ways than one.

"I'll rip your dick out with my teeth, motherfucker!" Yang shouted. "I won't let you lay a hand on my sister."

"What? Oh, no, no. I'm not a pervert. Well, no more than any other man, I mean."

"Don't play dumb." Yang clenched her teeth. "My sister is dressed and she couldn't have done it alone, given the circumstances."

"I changed her, that's true."

Those words froze her blood. Ruby turned her head. She noticed, with shame and rage, how a few tears flowed down her cheeks. I'm going to need a lot of baths to feel clean again, she thought. If ever do.

"But I did it the same way I brought you all here and created the spotlight and these chairs. That is to say, magically. Because she looks much more sexy like that. But didn't touch her. I wouldn't do anything to her that she wouldn't want me to. But of course, if she wanted to, I wouldn't complain.

"As soon as I get out of here, I'll beat you to death!"

"She'll do it," said Weiss. "Or my family, as soon as the people who work for us find you. I am Weiss Schnee, the heiress of..."

"Shut the fuck up, please. I know very well who you are. And I have no interest in asking for ransom. Nor, don't worry, in stealing your virtue. I have gathered you here so you can watch something."

"What?" Ruby asked with all the strength she could muster.

"I'm glad you asked. Universes, my dear. A variety of universes."

"You're crazy."

"No. I'm preternatural, an aut... I mean, God."

"And why does it say prenatural there?" Blake asked dryly.

Ruby took a look.

Blake was referring to something like an name tag he had on his chest, just above his heart. She hadn't noticed until now. But even now she couldn't see what was written there. It was strange, because the man wasn't that far from them.

"Because the name was already taken when I had to write my name in the God Registry... I mean, Author... Shit." He snarled in frustration.

_Either he's completely crazy or he's a complete imbecile_, she thought. _None of those options are good._

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life," Blake replied.

"Shut up." Preternatural... or prenatural, whatever, snapped his fingers. Blake tried to say something but was not able to. He held them in the palm of his hand. They had no choice but to obey.

He must have done the same thing to Yang without her noticing, as she had been silent for some time. She simply twisted in her seat, trying to get up. Without success. And maybe she should do the same. Not resign herself. Not yet.

"Anyway, as I was saying. Universes, etc, I want you to see them on that projector over there," he said, pointing a finger behind him.

The projector appeared out of nowhere.

"And when will you return us to Beacon?" Ruby asked. "You said universes. How many? How long would that take?"

"Zero seconds. You could spend a lifetime here and then go back to your normal lives as if nothing had happened. And even though I said universes, I mean stories within those universes. Stories of parallel versions of you all... and your acquaintances."

Prenatural remained silent for a long time.

"I'm not good at explaining things."

"I had already noticed that," Ruby said.

"Really? Thank you for paying attention to me, my dear. Anyway, one more thing: above all, these experiences will be focused on you and Jaune."

"Why?"

Weiss was paler than usual and motionless. Even if she could have spoken, Ruby suspected she wouldn't have said a word. And Blake... Blake was as quiet as ever. It was impossible to know if prenatural had silenced her or not.

In any case, it was up to her to ask the questions.

"For stupid and completely arbitrary reasons," he readily admitted, "that you shouldn't worry about."

"There's one thing that worries me."

"What?"

"You didn't really answer my question."

"I know, I'm sorry. We'll talk about it when you finish watching the first story, okay? All right." He snapped his fingers. The projector turned on, at the same time she and the others were set free. To talk and move.

Of course, prenatural disappeared without a trace immediately afterwards.

"What do we do?" Yang asked, frustrated.

"What else can we do?" Blake replied. "Let's do as he says. If he's telling the truth, and I think he is, it could have been much worse. For everyone."

"I suppose you're right." Yang sat down again.

Despite the situation they were in, Ruby felt excitement grow in her chest. How could it not? Alternative versions of her and her friends. Different worlds, perhaps worlds not ravaged by the Grimm.

Surely in many of those worlds her mother hadn't died.

A strange symbol appeared on the screen. Some kind of triangle. And a song played that sounded familiar, even though she was sure she had never heard it before in her life.


	2. Assassin's Creed - 1

**Assassin's Creed [1]**

The strange symbol suddenly disappeared, so did the music. Just as quickly she saw herself walking down the corridors of Beacon. It was a very strange experience, as if she were literally daydreaming. And at the same time it didn't seem strange enough.

After all, she had recognized the specific corridor in an instant, at the moment there wasn't the slightest difference with the Beacon she knew.

As for herself, she could only see one.

Her height, her hair, the shape and color of her eyes, her figure, the size of her breasts, eyeballing it. All that was like looking at herself in a mirror. The only thing that broke the effect was the clothes that the Ruby on the screen wore: her other huntress outfit, which she had named Slayer.

"Fuck."

Surprised, Ruby raised her head towards the sound of the voice. She saw Prenatural's head floating above them. It was the most disturbing thing she had ever seen, as it seemed to be growing out of the darkness. Or rather, to be a part of it.

"This was not what I wanted," he continued. "What the hell happened? Anyway, I guess the order doesn't matter. We have all the time in the world."

He thought Yang would shout something at him, but she remained silent. She opted for the same thing.

Much to her chagrin, she was curious. She didn't think there was a single person in the world, however pleased they felt, who would refuse the opportunity to see what their life might have been like if they had made X decision instead of Y at a turning point.

She was no exception.

She didn't know what this universe was all about, but she was sure their captor wouldn't bother to let them take a look at a moment that didn't have the slightest importance. No matter how crazy he was.

_Or so I hope._

After a while walking alone in silence, the other Ruby entered her team's room... Well, assuming she was still the leader in that universe. Inside there was no noticeable difference, with the only exception of a box in the middle.

The others were not there.

"What is this?" The other Ruby said. She squirmed around uncomfortably in her chair. Did she really sound like that?

The other Ruby approached the box, knelt before it to open it.

It all happened very quickly.

Something jumped over the other Ruby from the box, and for a tenth of a second he was allowed to think that it had been Zwei, sent in a package by his father to get rid of him. But that was not the case. What was on top of his alter ego, pressing it to the ground, preventing it from moving, was a beast that had no legs, but tentacles.

A kind of Grimm that didn't exist in his universe. At least as far as she knew.

Her heart went up her throat. She didn't want to see something like that. The other girl —because she suddenly couldn't bear to refer to her as Ruby— had no weapon, no way of defending herself.

The result was obvious. Inevitable.

One of the Grimm's tentacles slid under her breasts, lifting them up, making them stand out like a corset. Another slipped under her skirt, a third covered her mouth before she could scream. The tentacles gave off a wet, sticky substance that made her think of semen, even though there was no real resemblance.

Ruby shrieked and put her hands over her mouth. This was almost worse than she had thought at first.

The other Ruby's eyes became unfocused. She opened them wide, letting out a sound that had nothing to do with pain or fear. She seriously thought her head would explode. That it was physically impossible for her to get any redder.

Luckily, the screen turned off, preventing her from seeing what would follow. But she could still heard it.

The other Ruby moaned. Loud, clearly, with obvious enthusiasm. The constant wet sounds were even more obscene without any accompanying images.

She wasn't born yesterday. She was not as innocent as many no doubt thought, including her own sister. More than once she had experimented with, uh, exploring her body. But she had never seriously thought about sex, with boys or girls. She had never dared to think what she would sound like...

She opened her mouth to say something. A protest, but nothing came out. She felt very weak. A little dizzy. Her legs were shaking like jelly.

She suspected that if she hadn't cried a short time ago, she would have done it now.

She wasn't born yesterday. She was not as innocent as many no doubt thought, including her own sister. More than once she had experimented with, uh, exploring her body. But she had never seriously thought about sex, with boys or girls. She had never dared to think what she would sound like...

She opened her mouth to say something. A protest, but nothing came out. She felt very weak. A little dizzy. Her legs were shaking like jelly.

She suspected that if she hadn't cried a short time ago, she would have done it now.

"Turn it off, motherfucker!" Yang said. "If you're going to turn it off, turn it all off!"

"I don't see why I should," Prenatural dryly replied.

"Do you think it's so funny to make Ruby suffer?" Weiss asked. "Funny way to show your love."

"What are you talking about? Seriously, I don't see the problem. I already removed the video. And since it's been accidentally put, well, let's finish watching. What's wrong with that?"

Weiss looked at him as if trying to judge whether he was serious or just making fun of her. All of them.

"Look at her," she said slowly. "Can't you see how embarrassed she is?"

Preternatural materialized his whole body and landed on his knees next to the screen suspended in the vacuum in which they were. Surely it had been a poor attempt to look cool to her eyes.

"Ruby, are you embarrassed?" he asked.

"Yes," she muttered.

Prenatural leaned back as if she had punched him.

"Wow, I didn't expect that. And why, if you don't mind me asking? This is one of my favorite videos. I've lost count of how many times I've masturbated to it. Your voice is beautiful. And everything else too, of course."

A deep chill shook her. Ruby wished he hadn't said that. She had imagined it, of course, but would have prefered not to have known it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

"Because I don't want to hear or see that. Turn it off. Please."

Prenatural sighed. But he raised his right hand, snapped his fingers, and the moans stopped.

"Are you happy now?"

"Not wholly."

"Well, what else can I do for you?"

"Give me back my normal life. And let me think for the rest of my life that this has been nothing but a strange nightmare. If you told the truth about yourself, you should be able to do that."

"We've already talked about it," he replied as if bored. Without a second thought. "You and the others will be free. But not so soon. Anyway, I'm really sorry you didn't like it. But you might like the one I wanted to put on better. Or not. We'll see about that.

But we have to try, at least. Without the courage to try, life has no meaning."

It was the most sensible thing that being had said since they met. Which, unfortunately, was not saying much. She hated him from the bottom of her heart, but she might come to feel pity for him. A decade later.

_If he ever opens the door to this birdcage._

That strangely familiar music played again, rescuing her from the destructive spiral of her thoughts. On the screen, which was now as white as her mind, the symbol she had seen before took shape.

* * *

Ezio was running towards the square.

He was still dressed in his father's strange robes, so all the people on the way glued their eyes to him, looking at him as if he had lost his mind. Perhaps for the first time in his life, the attention and opinion of others was not for him something to be proud of or ashamed of. He was only vaguely aware of the glances, the hard whispers that vibrated in the air.

He had much more important things in his thoughts.

With the arrest of his father and brothers, the world had fallen on top of him in an instant, and he didn't even understand why. In the last few hours he had found bits and pieces of answers, but he was nowhere near knowing the truth about the whole matter.

However, answers could wait until his family was together again. Then they would have all the time in the world and they could... Well, do whatever was necessary.

Even though he was only sixteen, Ezio wasn't naive or childish enough to believe that things would go back to the way they were before. Maybe they would even have to leave Florence, run away from what had been their friends and neighbors, but...

But.

He stopped in his tracks as soon as he reached the square.

His chest burned like a forge. He couldn't breathe properly. He had the sensation that his legs were made of jelly. He placed his hand on the handle of his father's sword, hoping it would give him strength. He lifted his head.

A sea of people had gathered in the square.

Above a wooden platform was his father's friend, whose name now escaped him. Beside him was a man dressed in black. He was familiar, although he was not sure why or where.

His father and siblings, even little Petruccio, had a rope around their necks.

* * *

"Come on, say something," Prenatural asked.

Ruby looked at him out of the corner of her eyes. Her hands were shaking.

"What do you want me to say? I'm watching the life of one of my best friends fall apart. Yes, that is a Jaune, not our Jaune. But that is too close for my taste. He's practically identical, except for the name.

My friend's suffering is not a movie, do you understand? Even if it looks like one."

Prenatural remained silent for a long time. During that time, the image and the sounds on the screen remained paused.

"Movie?" He repeated as if he hadn't heard a more ridiculous thing in his life. "Is that what you'd compare it to? Are you sure?"

Ruby blinked. She hadn't expected that kind of answer.

"With what else could I compare it to?"

"Think about it."

* * *

"Giovanni Auditore," his father's friend said, "you and your accomplices are charged with a crime of treason. Do you have any evidence to rebut the charges?

"Yes," replied his father. "The documents you were given last night."

"I'm afraid I don't know anything about those documents."

His soul fell to his feet. He himself almost fell.

"He's lying!" Ezio shouted in the midst of the crowd.

In vain. He was just another voice in the crowd. One more face. The face of the son of a traitor, destined to die in the embrace of the rope. By nature, someone you couldn't trust.

Even if it had been otherwise, there were too many people and too much noise for someone important to have heard. He had to get closer. Stop this madness... somehow. In the worst case, he would fight. He could do it.

With his father's robes and sword, he would

take revenge

No! No! Shut up!

Ezio swam in the crowd.

"In the absence of any compelling evidence to the contrary," he said... Uberto, his name was Uberto. Damn traitor! ", I am bound to pronounce you... guilty. You and your collaborators are hereby sentenced to death."

Those words fell on Ezio like thunder from a clear sky.

"You are the traitor, Uberto!" His father shouted with a rage that froze the blood in his veins. And with a palpable resignation that was even worse. "You may take our lives this day – but we will have yours in return! I swear! We wil–"

Petruccio finally couldn't take it anymore. He broke into tears.

With a gesture, Uberto signaled one of the guards to pull the lever.

The trapdoor opened. His family fell through it, so the ropes tightened against their necks, promising a death as certain as a stab wound to the heart. Only much slower and more painful.

Ezio ran, pushing all those he found in his path away from him. Just as he should have done from the beginning.

"Father!"

The crowd, who watched the execution largely with cold indifference, didn't know it, but six lives hung from those ropes. Not just three.

Ezio stopped, unable to believe what he had just seen. Unable to believe that anyone could do this to his family. They had never... They didn't deserve... Little Petruccio! The world went round and round before his eyes.

Easy, Ezio, easy. This is nothing but a nightmare.

"Over there! Get the boy! He's one of them!"

A couple of guards came out, apparently, out of nowhere. Each grabbed one of his arms, restraining it. He twisted and turned with all his might. It couldn't end like this.

"I'll kill you for what you've done!"

He slipped away from their grip. With a quick, surprisingly firm motion he drew the sword, taking advantage of the momentum he also turned towards the guards. He knew what he had to do and was prepared to do it. He could not rest if...

"Guards!" Uberto. Again. "Arrest him! Don't let him escape!"

There were so many guards. One of them, covered in armor from head to toe, disarmed him with a powerful blow from his axe. And suddenly he was nothing more than a child, alone and frightened, at the mercy of a hundred faceless monsters who wanted him dead. Not an avenger.

Among the crowd of monsters, he spotted two people he had seen not long ago. Though it seemed to him that it was quite the opposite.

"You'd better run, boy", the man said. "And fast!"

Even he wasn't stupid enough to think he still had a chance. In fact, even if he had kept the sword, he would not have gotten very far, not far enough to cut the ropes and definitely not far enough to reach Uberto.

But those words were the push he needed to get moving.

In other words, he ran.

Without a second thought. Without looking back.

* * *

"Ruby?" Prenatural called her. He sounded almost... _scared_.

When it was all over, she hid her face in her hands. And began to cry. Now she couldn't stop. She didn't make the slightest sound, she didn't move, but she had only felt this bad once in her life. She didn't want to listen to anyone. Do or see anything.

She felt the arms of someone around her.

At first, thinking it was Prenatural, Ruby tensed like a bow. She resigned herself, thought that whatever had to happen would happen, because she felt too tired to do anything about it.

Only then did she realize that she was squeezed against a soft chest, that the caresses she felt on her back and behind her head were kind, not lustful. And the tickle in her nose... it must have been Yang's hair, yes.

That made her feel better. Not by much, but a little. And it would have to be enough.

"What's the matter? -Prenatural asked.

"That you're a bastard," Yang replied bluntly, without stopping caressing her. I don't want to waste any more saliva than I have to on someone like you, so I'll get to the point. If you are who you say you are, you should know more about us than the superficial. Know what Ruby has had to go through. And yet you show her this.

I will kill you. From now on that will be my mission in life. I will find a way, no matter what. There is always a way."

Silence. A heavy silence like, for example, a rope around your neck.

Little Petruccio had Ren's face. He wasn't exactly a friend of hers, but it had made the experience even worse. She couldn't stop remembering how his sobs made him tremble, knowing that within a moment he would die and how he would do it.

Again and again the despair in Jaune's face - no, Ezio, she reminded herself - came to mind with horrible clarity. No doubt that image would haunt her in her nightmares for years to come.

"Ruby," Prenatural said, "look at me."

"Enough," Yang said. Her voice trembled slightly. "That's enough."

"Ruby, I'm sorry this turned out to be... unpleasant. You don't know how much. And I'm not going to lie to you. Personally, I think at the end of the day the good weighs more than the bad, but along the way you'll see things just as bad. Or even worse."

"I don't want to see anything more," Ruby said with all the strength she could muster. "Please. If you really love me, let me go."

"Ruby. If you cooperate with me to the end, I will return Summer to you."

Ruby lifted her head. She looked at the being with her eyes wide open.

"Really?"

"Really," he said in a soft voice. "That and many other things are in my power."

"Ruby, you can't trust him," Yang said. Knowing that there was no other choice for her. That it was too tempting a reward to refuse.

"Yes you can, Ruby. Think, if you want, that I am pathetic and twisted and that my love is just as pathetic and twisted. But it exists, I don't think I've given you any reason to think otherwise. In spite of everything. So what do you say?"

"Yes, I will."

"Very good, Ruby. Very good." He smiled, "Now give me a kiss on the cheek, will you?

Ruby nodded. She approached Prenatural, feeling empty. Feeling as if her feet didn't reach the ground. Just thinking about doing 'that', her desire to vomit had increased significantly. But deep down it wasn't that bad. She had done worse. Many times she had bathed in the blood of the Grimm.

She imagined she was actually about to kiss Yang. Or her father. Something good, normal. Something she shouldn't have any doubts about.

She stopped, closed her eyes. And did it.

His skin was as cold as that of a corpse, but if she stepped aside now, he might get offended. Perhaps he would refuse to resurrect his mother. So Ruby prolonged the kiss for at least half a minute.

When she backed off, the first thing that crossed her mind was this:_ I wish I could rinse my mouth with a little water._

She opened her eyes.

Prenatural crossed glances with her, smiled in a terrible and unnatural way. Showing all teeth. More like an animal than a human being.

"It's a start," he said. Satisfied.


	3. Assassin's Creed - 2

**Assassin's Creed [2]**

Prenatural had been with his back to her for a long time, still and silent like a statue. Too long. It was clearly suspicious. Thanks to that, She noticed a small detail she should have noticed earlier: that monster was not breathing.

If he did not need air, he wouldn't have lungs or anything like that. Nor, perhaps, other weak points that all living beings should share.

Like a heart that she could tear out with her own hands.

Ruby looked around. She sighed deeply, rose to her feet.

"Wait, where do you think you're going?" Yang asked in a coarse whisper.

She looked over her shoulder at her older sister.

"To take a look," she answered simply. "Someone has to do it."

Ruby circled around Prenatural, caressing the handle of her scythe. She was sure he wouldn't dare lay a hand on her. At least not her. But it never hurt to be cautious. If he went crazy and decided to attack her despite the deal they had and his supposed love, she might not be able to react in time if she didn't have her hand on the weapon.

Prenatural's eyes were out of focus, as if he had fallen asleep while standing.

Which was far from improbable, of course. But she wasn't quite convinced. Because of the way the being was breathing, the fact that his pupils wouldn't stop moving and a combination of many other small details.

Ruby grabbed the handle of Crescent Rose with such force that her hand began to tremble.

No, that was not the reason. She should at least be honest with herself. She was just scared, that was the truth. Prenatural was a being too incomprehensible with too concrete and too perverse motives.

An important part of training people to fight the Grimm was teaching them to fight fear, and they did this by giving them knowledge.

But that would not do. Knowledge of such an enemy, which was like an insurmountable wall, only served to nourish fear. She felt like a child again. Weak, vulnerable. Helpless.

A victim instead of a protector.

The bitter aftertaste on the tip of her tongue and in her throat seemingly was there to stay. It would be a long time before she could feel comfortable in her own skin again.

Until she could feel again like...

No. She wasn't feeling like a child, she was a child. Another important part of training to fight the Grimm: acquiring the ability to deceive yourself. Pretending to be something you're not. That was the reason for the unique outfits, the personalized weapons. That was why very few hunters wore more than a few pieces of armor.

"Ruby?" That was the voice of one of the girls. She wasn't sure which one.

She took a step forward, took out Crescent Rose and unfolded it. She lifted it with two hands above her head.

Don't be silly, shouted something deep inside her. If he has let you keep your weapon it is because it cannot do anything to him. It was a conclusion even a child could reach. A simple and logical idea.

Going further with that... As human as he may seem, if Prenatural didn't need to breathe oxygen to survive, he certainly wouldn't need the blood that flowed through his body either. Assuming there was a single drop under his skin. So then, how to kill him?

Her mother's face, which looked normal and not like the day she saw her corpse, appeared in her mind.

She wanted to believe that Prenatural could resurrect her. She wanted to believe that soon they would be together again, forever and ever. But she couldn't trust him. So even if she swung the scythe, ripping Prenatural's head from his shoulders and killing him almost instantly, even supposing it would be so easy, she wouldn't be losing anything.

Because he would never resurrect Summer even if he could. And yet...

After a small eternity, she dropped the scythe. She realized, as if seeing something which was happening to another person, that her legs were shaking uncontrollably.

_On another occasion_, she promised herself. _Soon_.

She wasn't sure if she had lied to herself or not.

She let out a scream of anger and frustration from the bottom of her throat, and returned Crescent Rose to its place. Under the astonished stares of her three partners, she retraced her steps, dropped into the chair.

Ruby raised her head towards the sky, which was a void indistinguishable from the ground. She tried to control her breathing. After an endless amount of time, she placed her hands, clenched into fists, on her lap. And opened her mouth.

"He seems to be asleep. Or the local equivalent of... whatever he is. If you're going to try something, maybe this will be the only good chance."

"He could be faking it," Weiss tentatively said.

"I don't see why. Hard as it may be to believe it, he is clearly far more powerful than anything that exists in our world. Whether it's people or Grimm. He doesn't need to lower our guard to kill us. If he wanted to do that, we would already be dead."

"You're right. But maybe he wants us to try something so that he can... punish you and feel justified in it."

"In any case," Blake intervened, "attacking him is too risky for the moment. Ruby, you could have approached him and stuck Crescent Rose in her heart. But if you haven't, it's for a reason. So why do you seem to be trying to push us to act? Could you explain?

"Don't talk to my sister like that, Blake, don't play with fire. Either way, we can't just meekly obey everything that monster says.

Because sooner or later we'll all regret it. Sooner or later...

She stopped suddenly, looked at her from the corner of her eyes.

Ruby bit her lower lip, remembering the video, remembering the creature with tentacles that had assaulted her other self. And her moans of pleasure.

"He will try to rape me. That's what you were going to say, isn't it? Well," she pushed her hair back with one hand, "I've had time to think and I'm not so sure anymore."

"That's called Stockholm syndrome," Blake said.

"Haha. I mean it, girls. It's hard for me to decide if he's being deliberately malicious or if he's like... like a child, for lack of a better way of expressing it.

"What do you mean?"

"Babies have to learn to talk, to walk, but not just those things. Everything else too. Because they don't know how the world works. That's why they can believe in things like 'If you step on a crack, you'll break your mother's back' and a lot of other nonsense. Something like that.

"You want to believe that because you want to have hope," Yang said in a soft voice. "But remember the way he's talked about you so far. There's not a shred of innocence in his heart."

"I'm not saying he's innocent, I'm just..." Ruby grunted, put her hands to her head. -Well. Forget it, it doesn't matter, even if it turned out that I'm right, nothing would change."

Prenatural suddenly turned. Something had changed in him, but she couldn't put her finger on what. Perhaps it was just her imagination.

"What happened?" Ruby asked, doing her best to pretend to worry, to sound like he wanted her to sound. "I was starting to worry."

"Doing what I do isn't easy. Even seeing what happens right after one fragment requires difficult calculations, because the universe is a very, very big place. And chaotic like a sea in a storm. No, exactly like that, that's what it is. But I'm good at this. I've been doing it for... I've lost count.

"It's not the first time you've done this, then?

"If you're talking about bringing humans into this space, you're wrong, it is the first time. I have practice for another reason. One you know. Don't make fun of me. After all, you taught me everything I know.

Ruby recoiled from the surprise.

"What do you mean?"

Prenatural stayed silent, but looked at her with wide eyes. He seemed unsure even of where he was.

"I don't know..." He said in a barely inaudible voice. "I don't know."

The projector suddenly came on, with a sound like thunder when it fell. That made her have goosebumps.

"What do you mean?" Insisting was the only way to get to the truth.

"I told you I don't know!"

"Only a few know the truth." A new voice, loud, frantic, made her gaze at the screen. It took her several seconds to realize it was her Uncle Qrow's voice. The way he spoke didn't bode well. "It surrounds us in signs, paintings, faces, documents, but...but we don't see it, because we are blind to our creation."

To the right of the screen was a short sentence, but most of it was white spaces, not letters. Making it impossible to even guess its meaning.

To the left, the jumbled pieces of an image, arranged in a black circle.

Something or someone started to rotate those images. Qrow himself, or whatever he was called in that reality? Maybe, but Prenatural had said that those 'experiences' would be centered mainly on Jaune and her, and that rule hadn't been broken yet.

Whoever it was completed the image quickly.

She had hoped it would clear up some of her doubts, but the meaning of the image, a beautiful painting, was completely incomprehensible to her. It was to be expected that in other worlds there would be different cultures with different symbols and figures..., but frustrating.

Gathering the pieces of the painting also made the whole sentence appear. But without more context, it was just as incomprehensible as the painting.

_It has been hidden, altered._

The person who had solved the first puzzle, still invisible, was moving a white rectangle through the painting. Looking for something. Or waiting for some kind of reaction. Rubycame to the conclusion that he or she was using a computer and that the painting, the phrase and all that was to come was an encrypted message from Qrow.

A desperate, crazy Qrow.

She had heard him agitated many times, especially when he got drunk more than usual, which happened too often, but never to that point. And yet there was no comparison. His rants about this and that which were fueled by alcohol could in no way have prepared her for this.

Beeps sounded. Did that mean that it was approaching the right place?

The person left the white rectangle over the eye in the sky, soon a drawing took its place. It was difficult to discern the details, but she was sure it was a drawing of a human body. Only, apparently, with extra legs and arms.

More confusion. She clenched her teeth.

And below that, a small amount of embarrassment. The clue, placed next to the painting, had been this one: Open your eyes. What else could be the solution? Open one or both of them to see what was inside. It was obvious. She should have realized it sooner.

A file appeared...«The origin of the species.»

_But... but we don't see it. Because we are blind to our creation._

Ruby hadn't thought that sentence would be so literal, but it made sense. Now that he had thought of that, he couldn't come up with any other way of interpreting it. What was the secret? And how did he discover it? And the question that interested her most: what price did she have to pay for it?

**ACCESS DENIED**

The file didn't disappear, but it moved up and to the left. In the center of the screen appeared a red wheel, squares and many sets of five-digit numbers. This time she couldn't figure out which one might be the right one. Where the trick was.

Then Qrow's voice rose, cutting through the air like a knife, and she stopped thinking.

"I can't do it. Can I? Will it free me from the eternal wheel of time? I feel the guillotine cut my neck, how the bullet pierces my chest, how the water fills my lungs."

On two occasions there was something like static. Once his voice went down in volume to the point where it became almost inaudible, but not because he had whispered, but as if he his head was beneath the water.

It was terrifying. Almost as if she were listening to the message of a ghost.

"My blood is red and thick." The anguish in his voice broke her heart. When Ruby processed those words, her heart accelerated to a painful extent. "It's time to go."

"Son of a bitch," Yang spat out, too furious to scream. "You're doing it on purpose. Don't try to pretend. You like to see her suffer, don't you? Do you hear me? Do you hear me, you fucking son of a bitch?"

But Prenatural didn't answer. He was as if hypnotized, looking at the screen. It was quite obvious that this was another mistake, not what he had really wanted to show her. Frankly, she was beginning to wonder if he knew what he was doing.

"My blood is red... and thick," he repeated, muttering between his teeth, as if biting every syllable. She had never seen so much savagery on anyone's face. Now he didn't even resemble a human being.

On the screen, the person in question, whoever it was, began to enter a password. Each click that resonated in the empty space made her visualize the locks of a door being opened. One by one.

"Red and thick. My blood is red and thick." He repeated that over and over again, more and more frantically, raising his voice more and more, echoing into the void as if they were deep in a cave that no living being had trod in for centuries.

They were stunned. No one wanted to speak. That was not surprising, for to speak would be to attract his attention.

Ruby swallowed.

As if that sound had struck him, finally Prenatural stopped speaking and fell to his knees with his head bent at an unnatural angle, as if it were not attached to his neck although it definitely was.

The password turned out to be the correct one, but it wasn't the last test. A skeleton now floated in the darkness of the screen, in pieces. And next to it, a yellow artifact in the shape of a ball.

Whatever happened on the screen was the least of her concerns.

She forced herself to look away. But that didn't stop her from hearing what Qrow said next.

"I can see the stars." His voice was soft, awed. There was no trace of pain or fear there. But it was precisely that what made it more terrifying to her. "My mind is flying. Lucy, I can't take it anymore."

She didn't know what had happened to him, but he had completely lost his mind. And now he was on the edge of the abyss. No, she had been. Because her voice was nothing more than a recording.

"She sees me raise the knife." After one last whisper of Qrow, the silence fell on all those gathered there like a shroud.

Ruby took two steps forward. Towards Prenatural.

"Are you all right?" She didn't care, of course. But not talking was also a risk. Specifically, she risked not doing anything about a disaster she could have prevented.

Prenatural raised his head. But he didn't look at anyone, not even her.

"She sees me raise the knife," he repeated as if reciting a prayer.

He raised both hands and stabbed his nails in his face like they were knives. When he removed them, he tore off pieces of his own skin and flesh, blood which was as red as that of a human being flew away.

Ruby drowned out a scream.

Prenatural continued to mutilate himself. His expression didn't change a shred. Although the best result for her was for him to kill himself, saving them the work, and letting them live in peace, she felt sick. Who would want to see that?

_I was wrong_, she thought, feeling her stomatch drop. _And how. He is different from us, but not only by what he understands by morality, his way of life, his planet, his species._

The most important difference, which rose above all others like the roar of an emergency siren, was that he was completely mad.

From him now not only blood was shed, but also some golden flashes that burned the eyes. And yet he didn't turn his gaze away from that horrible spectacle. For she couldn't. She felt like an empty straw doll.

The name tag disappeared. What was left of his ruined face melted... no, it changed unceasingly, as if he were trying on a series of masks.

Between changes she saw that the expression and features of these masks were becoming more and more inhuman. More like badly made dolls than a living being. In the end he returned to his original face. Or at least the face Ruby had seen first.

Then Prenatural disappeared like the sun sinking behind the horizon. Leaving no trace.

* * *

**Note**

A little question: is the foreshadowing of this chapter too obvious?


	4. Assassin's Creed - 3

"He would explain all this to us," Weiss broke the silence, an adult Weiss, from the world on the other side of the screen. The one called Lucy of whom the equivalent of Qrow had talked about? Very likely. "If we could ask him, of course."

Her words were appropriate for their situation, but not entirely. Even assuming he cooperated, Ruby was almost certain Preternatural had no idea why he did the things he did. She had to believe that the truth was within her grasp, but that being didn't have it, there was no point in deluding herself about that.

What had happened to that Qrow? Who was Lucy, what did she have to do with his situation?

But those questions didn't matter, it also didn't matter, of course, what life she might have lived in that universe. What mattered was that the screen reacted in some way, to some extent, to the feelings of Preternatural.

_It's time to go._

Ruby felt a chill.

She turned to look at the screen.

The image had changed again. There was no trace of the human skeleton, of that strange, shining ball. Now it showed Ezio, dressed with that strange robe, standing on the roof of a building. Another moment, another place, perhaps even another universe.

"What do we do now?" Yang asked. Her voice came out small, insecure, but there was nothing strange about it.

It took him several seconds to realize that he wasn't referring to the fact that the screen had been turned off. Ruby shook her head slightly, almost imperceptibly.

She had to concentrate. For the sake of herself and everyone else.

"This is our chance," Blake said. "I don't know if good or bad, but maybe it's the only one that will remotely come close to being good. We have to act. Find a way out."

"Try it if you want to," Ruby said, "but I'm staying here."

All eyes in the room turned to her.

"You believe him, then," Weiss said with a hard-to-read expression. "You think he will help if you play along."

"No. We've talked about this."

"Then why?"

Ruby unfolded Crescent Rose and sat in her chair with part of the weapon resting on her lap. She didn't expect a fight. It just made her feel safer. She had the feeling that her thoughts flowed in the same way as her body did in the middle of a fight, that is to say, quickly and easily.

"Because I want to know the truth. The truth is important, a stake to stick in his heart. A weapon more powerful than any weapon we have at our fingertips. Well, more powerful, at least, that the only one we have."

"If he's not already dead," Blake said.

"And he's not."

"What makes you so sure? Seeing him before, no one would find it hard to believe that he was going to commit suicide."

"Assuming he can die."

"You're a good leader," she said slowly and after a while. "Much better than I thought you would be at first, and I like you. But, with all due respect, you're the one who's assuming too much. We don't really know practically anything about that thing."

She stopped and ran her hand through her hair. That's why she noticed that her cat ears had stiffened, but she didn't know why. If she had heard anything strange, she would have warned them.

Of that she was certain. But she didn't know enough about cats, or how much the real animal and a Faunus of the same type resembled each other, to make other assumptions.

Well, if it was important, she would say so. Sooner or later.

"I don't want to talk about this so openly, just in case, but it's the only way to come up with a plan," Blake continued. "And maybe we'll need one."

"What are you getting at?" Yang said, folding her arms above her breasts. Let's not waste time.

"That being has shown himself capable of preventing us from talking and moving. However, to assume that we have no way to fight him would be a mistake. Is he able to immobilize all four of us at once? To do something to my clones, even though they are the work of my Semblance? We do not know, but they are possible weaknesses, and that is only the beginning."

Ruby thought about it.

"Maybe you're right," she admitted, "but I'm going to stay here anyway. Waiting. If you want to go, go. But be very careful."

She didn't want to leave her friends alone, obviously she was investing every ounce of her willpower in keeping still and quiet about it. But protecting them took precedence over everything else, and she knew that wasn't the right decision.

The three of them would spend some time wandering around in the dark and would return to the starting point without having found anything useful. This space was unnatural, so to expect such natural things as entrances and exits was a bit absurd.

Ruby said nothing, however. She assumed it would be useless.

Yang sighed deeply. And she sat next to her.

"Go, both of you. I can't risk him coming back and finding her alone. Even if, in the end, I ..."

"We understand," said Weiss. Sparing her from having to finish such a painful sentence.

Ruby looked at her sister from the corner of her eye. She looked away quickly. She felt like a bad sister. Every time she went against what Yang wanted, regardless of her reasons, she ended up feeling like a bad sister.

_This is for the best_, she thought when their gazes crossed.

She looked away quickly.

_The best and the safest. I am not mistaken. So don't look at me like I forced you to do something crazy._

Weiss and Blake left without saying anything else.

The seconds of silence became minutes, she didn't know exactly how many. She could feel her heart in her throat, hot, heavy. Too much.

"There is nothing," Yang said.

"I know."

"Either he's dead and we should be looking for a way out, or this doesn't work the way you think it does."

"You're wrong," she said with complete confidence in her voice. She wasn't faking it.

"I don't understand what you're thinking now. I thought I would always do it, regardless of the situation, but I do not. I look at you and see a shadow of my sister." She paused. "Several shadows."

"I don't know what you mean."

"The shadow, I'm sorry to say, of Summer. A little bit of Dad's and Qrow's, too.

"I still don't know what you mean. I'm not acting normally, but this is neither the time nor the place to joke. So it can't be helped. Nothing about this situation is normal."

"I know, but... But..." Yang let out a grunt. "Words aren't my thing. Fists are. Forget it."

Ruby ran a hand through her hair, without letting go of her weapon.

"All right."

After a while, the screen lit up again, and it was a relief in more ways than one. Yang was her older sister and had also had to act as a mother for a few painful and too long years, which, in fact, still floated among her family in the present. Especially in the good times.

And despite everything, she didn't remember the last time the two of them had shared an uncomfortable silence. She didn't like feeling that way. It reminded her too much of days she would rather forget.

Fully aware that it wasn't possible.

Fully aware that, if she did, she would lose a part of herself that she could never recover. That she was marked by death and taking that away from her would make her a very different person. It would certainly be for the better, but the very idea of changing so profoundly for the second time terrified her.

She wanted to be at peace.

**Ezio took a deep breath.**

**-Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omnipotentem, factorem caeli et terrae, visibilium omnium, et invisibilium. Et in unum Dominum Jesum Christum, Filium Dei unigenitum. Et ex Patre Natum ante omnia saecula. Deum de Deo, lumen de lumine, Deum verum de Deo vero. Genitum, non factum, consubstantialem Patri: per quem omnia facta sunt. Qui propter nos homines, et propter nostram salutem descendit de caelis. Et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Virgine: et homo factus est. Cruifixus etiam pro nobis: sub Pontio passus et sepultus est. Et resurrexit tertia die, secundum Scripturas. Et ascendit in caleum: sedet dexteram Patris. Et iterum venturus est cum gloria judicare vivos et mortuos: cujus regni non erit finis. Et in Spiritum Sanctum, Dominum et vivifincatem: qui ex Patre Filioque procedit. Qui cum Patre, et Filio simul adoratur, et conglorificatur: qui locutus est per prophetas. Et unam sanctum catholictam et apostolicam Ecclesiam. Confiteor unum baptisma in remissionem peccatorum. Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum. Et vitam venturi saeculi. Amen.**

That was a different language from that spoken by Ezio, who sounded like from her Remnant but was not, and the other people she had seen in that universe. Unlike the first one, this one wasn't being translated by the machine. So to speak.

Ruby moved around in the seat.

Two languages. That had interesting implications, but what interested her most was the question of why. Because Ezio didn't understand? It seemed like the most reasonable explanation...

Well, no, there was nothing reasonable about that. A technology capable of achieving that was as implausible as the concept of 'taking a look' at other worlds.

He looked for her sister's hand. Yang squeezed it, looked at her, with her lips she drew the closest thing to a reassuring smile, given the circumstances.

**He was so close. So close.**

**Rodrigo Borgia, the Spaniard, the man who had arranged for most of his family to die on the gallows, cursed by their friends and acquaintances as traitors, was about twenty yards away from him. He hadn't noticed him. Nor would he do so until it was already too late.**

**He was but a man, and had already spent twenty-three years killing men like him. Men who thought themselves untouchable. Inhuman men. Men who saw everything and everything in the world as one more tool.**

**Rodrigo was no different. And yet he was.**

**To him, Rodrigo was much more than a man and worse than a monster. It filled him with terror.**

**Not of death, he had looked her in the eye too many times to fear her. The only thing that made his heart tremble was the idea of dying before avenging his family.**

**When his time came, he wanted to go to the next world with his head held high. He wanted to be able to look his brothers and his father in the eye. He had dismantled the Pazzi conspiracy, put an end to the Barbarigo family and much more, putting a good part of Rodrigo's lapdogs to death.**

**He had come a long way, yes. But he couldn't get what he wanted until that man was dead.**

**Ezio went through the rope that connected the scaffoldings, which was a direct way to an elevated position from where he could throw himself at Rodrigo.**

**He visualized the scene clearly. He visualized the jump, he visualized the fall as the short coat of Altair's armor fluttered behind him like the wings of a bat, shining with an almost white color thanks to the light that seeped through the stained-glass windows.**

**He visualized himself as an avenging angel. He visualized his movements, firm and fast, and, above all, a brief moment of fear in the face of the Spaniard before he stabbed the Hidden Blade in his heart. Putting an end to a twenty-three year old hatred. Finally allowing his father and siblings to rest in peace.**

**And as he did all that, he came to the end of the road.**

**As far as he knew, no one had seen him. Very few people looked up frequently enough. It was not a widespread habit even among the Templars, the enemies of the Assassins, about whom all knew they were very close friends of high places.**

**The eagle spread its wings.**

**He fell on Rodrigo in the middle of the mass, throwing him to the ground. He raised his hand and twisted his wrist, deploying the Hidden Blade. There was utter silence.**

**"I thought... I thought I was beyong this. But I'm not. I have waited too long, lost too much. Requiescat in pace, you bastard!"**

**Rodrigo Borgia opened his eyes. He had been stunned by the blow, but not much.**

**"I'm afraid not."**

**Rodrigo brandished the Papal Staff, throwing him back, along with a light similar to that of the Apple of Eden. Ezio was not intimidated, however, he tried again.**

**With a surprisingly fast movement for a man of his age and size, as well as another flash, Rodrigo not only repelled his attack, but also made him fly several meters backwards as if he weighed the same as a wet cat.**

**As he tried to stand, Rodrigo hit the ground with the staff. Throwing the rest of the crowd to the ground.**

**Ezio managed to resist. But he was the only one.**

**"How do you resist it?" Rodrigo asked. More than surprise, in his voice there was indignation. For him, he imagined, the power of the Apple was something like a physical representation of his power and influence. Not a power that escaped comprehension. Rodrigo's eyes went down to the bag he had tied to his waist. "I see. Nice of you to bring me the Apple. Now, give it to me!"**

**"Go to hell."**

**"Ah, ha, ha, ha, ha! Always so obstinate. Just like your father. Rejoice, my son, soon you'll be reunited with him."**

"Son of a bitch," said Ruby. She couldn't help herself.

**Rodrigo took the staff with both hands, took several steps forward.**

**"You're going to give me the Apple!"**

**Ezio took it out of the bag. "As you wish."**

**He created several copies of himself, all identical except that they wore not Altair's armor, but his father's Assassin robe. All armed and able to fight.**

**Five assassins of his level, very literally, against a fat, worn-out old man who was more accustomed to exerting his influence to crush threats than to demonstrate his power.**

**Contrary to what he had first thought, he had nothing to fear.**

**They had even had about the same amount of time to get used to the power of the Apple. In the worst case, one could say that they were on an equal footing. But obviously that was not the case.**

**"Fascinating! You have an impressive power. But if you think that's going to save you, you're very wrong."**

**The five Ezios threw themselves at Rodrigo, sword in hand.**

**His four copies moved independently. He didn't have to concentrate to control what they did, each movement, they were guided by his thoughts. By his rage and his hatred.**

**The confidence in his victory faded as quickly as he had started to believe it. Rodrigo was simply too fast. Even if he were in the prime of his strength, the papal attire should have hindered him from moving as he did.**

**He wanted to attribute that to a power of the Apple, but he knew it was not true. The Apple was an extraordinary weapon, incomprehensibly advanced. But it was good for what it was good for and nothing else.**

**Rodrigo was simply that good. He had not become a Grand Master of the Templar Order for nothing. If he had attacked him at another time, one in which he could have reached for his sword, like that day eleven years ago, perhaps he would have been defeated already.**

**It was as if he had not advanced a single step since that day.**

**What was left of his rage and his hatred vanished. Now, it was fear that drove him forward.**

**"You have reasons to fear me!" Rodrigo shouted, and how right he was. How right. "But you don't seem to understand that I'm the prophet. That nothing and no one can stand in my way. What you're doing is crazy. Walking to your death. Are you really that stupid, Assassin?"**

**Ezio didn't bother to respond. Speaking in the midst of a real fight only meant losing breath that you could use in attacking, defending, or anything else that was not useless.**

**Rodrigo knew that, of course. He was no fool. But he believed he was.**

**He believed that his words would affect him, make him nervous, lead to make a mistake. As if he were a child.**

**Nothing could be further from the truth.**

**Ezio avoided Rodrigo's next blow instead of stopping it. As he put distance between them, the Pope attacked again, making one of his copies disappear without a trace.**

**He cursed under his breath.**

**At this rate... At least he had an advantage that had nothing to do with numerical superiority. He used a sword, he could throw blows one after the other. What Rodrigo wielded was a staff, so he was forced to make wide movements to make the most of the weight of his weapon.**

**Altair's armor was more durable than any he had ever seen in his life. The only thing that it didn't cover was his head, so it was logical for Rodrigo to focus his attacks there, and that was what he had been doing since the beginning. That was an advantage as well. It gave him more time to react.**

**Only to a certain extent, though. Evidently.**

**Logic clashed with reality and, as it always did, reality overcame it. In just ten minutes he found himself fighting alone. Breathless. His whole body hurt. He struggled to breathe, the sword weighed heavily on him.**

**But...**

**But Rodrigo was in no better condition. That was the main weakness of that monster: endurance.**

**"No! I won't let you take it away from me."**

**"It's over, Rodrigo. Stop fighting and I promise you a swift end."**

**"Really, Ezio? If you were in my position, would you give up easily?"**

**Rodrigo hit the ground with the staff.**

**The shock wave knocked him to the ground again. From that position, he saw Rodrigo become invisible. Not literally, of course. It was just another illusion created by the Apple. But, in spite of the resistance that possessing another Fragment of Eden gave him, he was unable to see through it. So, in practical terms, it was as if he were truly invisible. There was no difference.**

**Ezio grabbed the Apple, hoping that touching it would give him what he needed to pierce the illusion.**

**Or perhaps he did so simply because touching his greatest weapon at a vulnerable moment should reassure him, and he had to think coldly if he wanted to survive this.**

**Rodrigo appeared over him after stepping on his wrist. Making the Apple of Eden - the apple of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, if one believed the stories - roll out of his reach. And to his hands, though he had to bend down to pick it up.**

**"At last!" The satisfaction in his voice was inhuman. Rodrigo stood in front of him.**

**Ezio tried to get up. Without success. He was paralyzed, even his heartbeat was slowing down. He could feel it with painful clarity. It was not his imagination.**

**"And now I will take care of you."**

**The whole Papal Staff gave off something like rays of the sun, an energy from another world that enveloped him, choking him, like the hands of a vengeful spirit.**

**Rodrigo raised his free hand little by little.**

**Lifting with it his inert body, making it float several centimeters above the ground. He had become his puppet.**

**Then he pulled out a dagger and stabbed him in the right place so that it would slide into the skin.**

Ruby gasped. She squeezed her sister's hand much harder, as if trying to crush it.

"Calm down," Yang said, even though she was also tense. "That's not real.

"You heard Preternatural. The screen shows other worlds. Somewhere in the universe, this is happening, has happened or will happen. Of course it's real. Very real."

"It's not real," she insisted. "It has nothing to do with us or our world, and that's what matters."

"He looks a lot like Jaune. And his eyes remind me of... You know what he reminds me of."

"Yes," Yang said, her voice changed.

**The weakest point in the armor. Maybe Rodrigo hadn't been serious during the whole fight. He had simply been looking for that point with every attack.**

**He felt no pain. Despite all the blood... Even though his armor was turning red.**

**He was aware that the lack of pain was a bad thing, because it indicated that the wound was very serious and not the other way around, but... What could he do about it? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. And he was so tired.**

**The light disappeared, and Ezio fell to the ground.**

**Into darkness.**

Ruby put her hands to her mouth, opening her eyes wide.

She had forgotten about discovering the truth about her situation thanks to the screen. All her lofty goals had disappeared from her mind, washed away by the tide of surprise, fear, pain. And the powerful poison that memory could sometimes become.

She imagined her Jaune lying on the ground, his stomach opened by the claws of a Grimm. A Beowolf, a Nevermore. Any of them. Did it matter? He should never have been in such a situation. He was obviously unprepared to face the risks.

But the world didn't care about those things. Sooner or later, he would pay the price for his lack of talent, his poor training.

That was a common fate for hunters. But for Jaune it would not come after a long and prosperous life, it would fall headfirst towards it as soon as he left Beacon. Only he could avoid it. But she wasn't sure if he was up to it.

She remembered Summer.

Her lively smile. Her corpse. She had also had a mission, perhaps a sort of private revenge against the world, like her. A mission that had dragged her into the depths of darkness.

She couldn't help crying.

She didn't need to wonder if her own death would be like that as well. She knew it would be, that it was written in the stars. That destiny would come true as long as he didn't change her path. And she was sure that she was not capable of making such a decision.

"Calm down, Ruby. We don't know if he's dead."

"The screen has turned off," she said with a voice broken by tears. That means there's nothing else to see.

"What are you talking about? It also went out when he fled after his family was executed and that obviously doesn't mean he was caught and hung. He kept fighting for twenty-one years!"

"He kept fighthing, you said. Past tense."

Yang grimaced.

"You know what I meant."

"He got stabbed in the stomach, through the armor. And there was so much blood... By the gods, so much blood." She took a deep breath, trying to regain control over herself.

But she couldn't stop shaking.

At that precise moment, the screen lit up again. Ruby looked, hoping that it would give her a glimpse into another world, thinking that the best thing would be to never know the truth and thus be able to hold out hope. To his surprise, however, what she saw was Ezio. Same place, same time.

He wasn't dead.

Perhaps he was still dying, but he was not yet dead.

**He was alive.**

**The realization of that fact struck him like cold water, sharpening his consciousness, his five senses. He rose with some effort and his hand placed on the wound. His head was spinning, as if he were standing on a piece of wood at sea.**

**He couldn't have spent much time unconscious, as those attending the mass were still out of it.**

**Rodrigo was nowhere to be found, but he had to believe that there was still time to hunt him down.**

**And not only that. The wound looked very bad because of the amount of blood, but it was no big deal, the armor had lessened the damage of Rodrigo's attack.**

**He would not die. Besides, he was still perfectly capable of walking, running, jumping. And finish what he had started.**

**Ezio closed his eyes to concentrate better and opened his other pair of eyes. Those of his gift. Instantly, the world lost all color saved by the glow of two dots on the wall in front of him. He approached the one on the left side and put his hand on it, pressing it.**

**It sank under his hand.**

**He pressed the other spot. As he thought, they turned out to be switches that opened a secret passage under the altar. He couldn't be 100% sure, but he believed Rodrigo had used it to escape. In fact, before he fell, he vaguely remembered seeing him heading toward the altar... Yes.**

**He ran down the stairs.**

**The architecture of the interior was unlike anything he had ever seen in his life. For a moment it made him think that he was still unconscious and dreaming. A white light came from lines on the floor that hugged the edges of the walls.**

**Its source was a mystery.**

**Unlike the light of a torch, it did not flicker. Not a bit. He felt a chill.**

**"What is this place?"**

**At the end of the road, he found a short fall, the Papal Staff inserted in a crack in the ground. And Rodrigo pounding on a wall furiously, as if he could shatter stone with bare hands.**

**"Open, damn it! Open!"**

**"It's over, Rodrigo." As the Pope turned towards him, Ezio threw the sword. Not towards his mortal enemy. Towards the ground. "No tricks. No ancient artifacts. No weapons."**

**He got rid of his knives, also of the Hidden Blades he carried in each arm and the weapons they contained: the Hidden Gun, the Poison Blade.**

**"Let's see what you are made of, old man."**

**"All right, we'll play by your rules."**

Ruby shook her head.

"Rodrigo is crazy. He has no chance of winning like this."

"Yes, of course," Yang said, supporting her. But she didn't seem very convinced. She imagined her reasons. Rodrigo Borgia was a real beast, with or without the help of that artifact, and Ezio was not in perfect condition.

Ezio and Rodrigo began to exchange punches.

"What are you looking for in the crypt, Rodrigo?"

"Don't you know what's inside it? Do you really want to convince me that the powerful Assassins can't imagine it?"

"What is there to imagine?"

"God! God is inside the crypt!"

God. She could almost hear that it would be capitalized. So that world believed in one god, or at least a part of it. But did it really exist? Or was it another symptom of Rodrigo's rampant madness?

"Do you intend to make me believe that God lives beneath the Vatican?"

"It's a more logical seat than a kingdom above the clouds, don't you think? Surrounded by choirs of angels and cherubs... A charming image, but the truth is much more interesting."

Blake and Weiss appeared suddenly, coming out of the darkness like ghosts in the fog, making his heart jump up to his throat. She was interested in hearing what they had to say and was relieved to see them safe and sound, but she couldn't turn her attention away from the fight. She settled for a distracted greeting.

"Let's say I believe you. What do you expect him to do when you open that door?"

"I don't care. I'm not looking for approval, just power."

"Do you think he'll give it to you?"

"Whatever lies beyond that wall won't be able to resist the staff and apple. They were MADE for felling Gods."

"God is meant to be all knowing. All powerful. You think a couple of ancient relics can harm him?"

Blake and Weiss sat down. They began to talk to Yang, but she didn't hear their conversation, only the sound of the words. And even that didn't help her much, for they came to her as if from a very distant place. It couldn't be otherwise.

After all, she was in another time and in another place.

"You know nothing, boy. You take your image of the creators from an ancient book – a book, mind you, written by MEN."

"You are the Pope! And yet you dismiss the central text of your Faith?"

"Ha, ha, ha! Are you so naïve? I became Pope because it gave me ACCESS. It gave me POWER. Do you think I believe a single god-damned word of that ridiculous book? It's all lies and superstition. Just like every OTHER religious tract written over the past ten thousand years."

She didn't understand much, but...

"Ruby... Ruby, hey!"

That was Weiss's voice.

"Whatever you have to say to me can wait. Especially since it's obvious that you haven't found a way out."

"What can wait? There are much more important things than that ridiculous spectacle. For example, surviving this madness."

"And that's why I'm watching this. Now shut up." She immediately regretted being so harsh, the way her voice had sounded. But it was too late. She could only repent.

Weiss, perhaps for the first time in all the time they had been active as a team, listened to her without asking any questions. More out of surprise than for any other reason.

Ezio ended the fight by putting his hands around Rodrigo's neck, strangling him.

At the last moment, he stopped and threw him to the ground.

The Pope, whatever that was, touched the ground and something very similar happened to when Ezio used his 'gift'. Only instead of sinking into darkness, the world collapsed and turned white.

"What the hell is this?" Ruby asked.

She hoped to receive the answer soon, but none of the two seemed even slightly surprised. The power of the Fruit in action again? Yes, it was the only thing that made sense. It had to be that.

"You can't!" Rodrigo shouted "No! It's my destiny! Mine! I'm the prophet!"

"You never were."

Rodrigo put one hand on Ezio's shoulder.

"Get it over with."

Ezio moved the hand away with disdain.

"No. Killing you won't bring my family back -Ezio rose to his feet, without taking his eyes off Rodrigo. "I'm done."

Why? After so long, Ruby thought. What she felt was a deep sadness, not confusion, because of the enormity of the gap between them. In more ways than one. She suspected that she would never fully understand his decision..., but she wanted to.

"_Nulla è reale, tutto è lecito_," intoned Ezio. "Requiescat in Pace."

And he turned his back on him.

A chill ran all over Ruby's body, leaving her trembling. If she hadn't been sitting, she would probably have fallen to the floor.

Nothing is real, everything is permitted. Rest in peace.

Somehow, she instinctively understood the meaning of those words. Something in them was tugging on something in the depths of her heart, trying to bring it to light.

The white world died. Reality was reconstructed in a matter of seconds.

The Papal Staff was shining. Ezio walked to it, to the center of that strange chamber. Rodrigo had been unable to open the door even with the two Fragments of Eden, but as soon as Ezio touched the staff, it projected light on the door that somehow opened it. In other words, the stone sank to the ground, disappearing from sight.

Beyond there was only darkness.

Rodrigo disappeared suddenly, leaving no trace, as if by magic, and on the left of the screen appeared an image... A string of DNA? On top, written on a red background, it read: In Bocca al Lupo. Below: Synchronized.

"I don't understand anything," Ruby said.

"No?" Blake asked. "I was hoping that any of you would make what's going on clearer."

"Ruby, this is something our kidnapper has show us," Weiss said. "Of course it doesn't make sense. Of course it won't do us any good."

"Shut up, please," she said quietly.

More text, in black on white.

**MEMORY SYNCHRONIZED : SEQUENCE 14 COMPLETED.**

Was this... a memory?

But...

Ruby bit her lower lip hard. For the moment, there was no point in thinking about it.

Ezio went inside the crypt. The architecture was similar there, only that, as he walked, the surroundings lit up with golden lines that burned like a forest fire, leaving symbols in view. Art? Another language?

Another chill shook her.

He let go of Yang's hand and placed it over Growing Rose as well, squeezing it so tightly that his knuckles turned white, that his hands began to tremble.

Ezio was stopped because of a flash of light that appeared in front of him, stronger than the others, so much so that it clearly hurt the eyes, because Ezio raised both arms.

"Greetings, prophet."

The light dimmed. Ezio lowered his arms, and saw what she had seen before.

That the light traced the shape of a woman. She was like a being made of light, very similar to a human being and at the same time very distant, but in a different way from the Faunus.

The resemblance between the illumination of the crypt, the woman and the artifact called Fruit of Eden didn't escape him.

Was she looking at the creator of those weapons?

The creator of everything, as Rodrigo thought?

No, maybe not. He had said gods, she remembered it clearly. Plural.

"Greetings prophet. It is good you have come. Let us see it. To give thanks."

She was referring to the Fruit, of course. Ezio quickly reached the same conclusion and, without hesitation, extended the artifact towards the strange apparition. Some would say that was not the smart thing to do. But if that being wished him harm, Ezio would already be dead.

Ruby could feel it even through the screen. That the woman was like an elephant among ants.

The apparition placed her open left hand on the Fruit. It glowed, but its glow faded quickly. And if something had changed, it couldn't be perceived by the naked eye.

"We must speak," the woman said. But she wasn't even looking at Ezio, but right in front of her.

Rodrigo. Rodrigo had gone after Ezio, in spite of everything, and now he would attack him from behind. Ezio Auditore's story would end as badly as she had feared.

"Who are you?" Ezio asked.

The apparition looked at his face, and Ezio was not attacked. Why that, then? She refused to accept that Weiss was right. All this made sense, even though she still couldn't see it.

"Many names. When I died, it was Minerva. Before that Merva and Mera. And on and on. The others, too: Juno, who was before called Uni. Jupiter, who was before called Tinia..."

When she _died_?

"Are you... gods?"

Minerva laughed in a surprisingly warm way. Human.

"No. Not gods. We simply came... before. Even when we walked the world, your kind struggled to understand our existence. We were more... advanced in time. Your minds were not yet ready."

Minerva turned her head, again looked at the center of the screen. As if she saw something that Ezio could not.

Something or someone.

"Still... not. Maybe never. No matter. You may not comprehend us. But you will comprehend our warning. You must."

"None of what you are saying makes sense..."

Minerva looked at him. "Our words are not meant for you."

_I knew it_, Ruby thought, without feeling a shred of satisfaction. Because Minerva, the Fragments of Eden, her warning and how this related to Preternatural and his feelings remained a mystery.

"What are you talking about? There's no one else here!"

"Enough! I do not wish to speak with you but through you. You are the prophet. You've played your part. You anchor her, but please be silent! That we may commune."

Another look at the center of the screen.

"Listen," she said, and disappeared as suddenly as she had manifested itself.

"Do you think she is talking to us?" Weiss asked quietly. She sounded much younger than she really was. She thought of giving her a hug, but then she understood what she had just said, and that possibility left her frozen.

Ezio fell silent. Images appeared in the place previously occupied by the goddess Minerva. A red planet. A picture depicting barely dressed people paying homage to a giant being with a bird's head.

On the hand of that being floated the Apple.

"When we were still flesh and our home still whole, your kind betrayed us. We who made you. We, who gave you life!

We were strong. But you were many. And both of us craved war."

More planets. The whole solar system.

That, at least, was like in her world.

"So busy were we with earthly concerns, we failed to notice the heavens. And by the time we did... The world burned until naught remained but ash. It should have ended then and there. But we built you in our own image. We built you to survive."

The planets suddenly disappeared. Now, there was only one light left that twisted like a living being.

"And so we did. Few were our numbers. Your kind and mine. It took sacrifice. Strength. Compassion. But we rebuilt. And as life returned to the world... We endeavored to ensure this tragedy would not be repeated. "

"Now we're dying." The light went out, leaving only traces of what might have been another picture, blurred. She couldn't give them full meaning. "Time is against us."

For a few seconds, the stars could be seen. And then that light came back.

"Truth turned into myth and legend. What we built, misunderstood.."

The light dimmed in intensity gradually, as Minerva spoke, revealing a drawing. A structure. A circle on top. Engraved on it were symbols similar to those found throughout the crypt. Ruby wasn't sure that the receiver of the message, whoever it was, would understand with that alone, however.

It was not at all straightforward.

"Let my words preserve the message and make a record of our loss. But let my words also bring hope. You must find the other temples. Built by those who knew to turn away from war. They worked to protect us – to save us from the fire. If you can find them... If their work can be saved... so too might this world. Be quick! For time grows short. And guard against the cross – for there are many who will stand in your way."

Minerva appeared again.

Now the only thing that could be seen on the screen was her face.

"It is done. The message is delivered. We are gone now from this world. All of us. We can do no more. The rest is up to you, Ruby."

She dropped Crescent Rose.

"What?" Ezio asked, "Who is Ruby? I don't understand."

Minerva began to disappear. And this time she wouldn't return. Ezio approached.

"Wait, please! I have so many questions!"

Minerva disappeared. And the screen went out.

Ruby thought it was really over this time. It wasn't like that.

"What the hell..." That was her voice, not Ezio's. A more adult voice, no doubt, but not so different that she could confuse her for anything in the world.

She realized that Minerva's message had been directed to another Ruby. Not her.

"Yes, that's exactly what I wanted to say," Yang said.

On the screen: a blurry ceiling on which a fan spun.

"About ten minutes until..." The voice of a man she didn't recognize.

"... I need all my equipment..." A woman's, this time. She also couldn't relate her to someone in her universe. Which didn't mean there wasn't any connection, obviously.

"... ready to leave before they did..."

"That's me," Weiss said.

"Yes," Ruby said. As if she needed confirmation.

_Lucy_.

"RUBY!" shouted the woman.

The shot changed, showing the whole room and in the third person, not in first person, from the point of view of... herself. She was sitting on a machine that looked like an armchair. She looked as tired and disoriented as she felt.

She put one hand to her face.

"I know, I know."

"Okay, I'll say it again, sort of, because it couldn't be more appropriate," Yang said." What the hell."

"Shut up and listen," she said.

The other Ruby got up from the machine. She was wearing clothes very similar to her huntress outfit. There was no sign of Crescent Rose, however. No cape, either red or white.

It was very strange, indeed.

"Shaun, I want you and Rebecca to pack up all the equipment we have here and load it into the truck. You and I will take care of the Templars."

"Are they here?" asked the other Ruby.

"It was only a matter of time before they found us," Shaun said, passing by, carrying a computer case. "I'm surprised they took so long."

"Come on," said Lucy, throwing Ruby... a Hidden Blade.

She put the bracelet on quickly, without looking, as if she had done it a thousand times.

And she believed the other her had. More or less.

They ran out of the room, ready to face their enemies. Lucy didn't have a Hidden Blade, however, it was obvious because she wore a sleeveless shirt. If she was armed, it was with something she had in her pocket, because she couldn't see any other kind of weapon in her person either.

"What's the plan? We leave this place, and then what?"

"We have another lair. It's..."

There was a strong impact. The lights went out for a brief moment, and when they did, they were red. Emergency lights.

"We have company. The truck is ahead."

Ruby heard footsteps, saw a blur from the corner of her eye. She got up from the chair and looked at almost the same time as all the others.

Twenty-four blood-soaked ribs protruded from his chest like broken swords stabbed through his back. It was the same number of ribs humans and Faunus had. But that was one of the things that made him more like a Grimm, at this moment.

She didn't mind the interruption. And she was only concerned to a certain extent.

She had already learned as much as possible from that video.

Preternatural looked at her in a different way until now, and then she noticed that his pupils were constantly changing color from silver to completely white.

"You have to help me," he asked with a legion of voices, all speaking at the same time, mixing.

Ruby relaxed. But only a little.

"How can I do that?"

Yang, Blake and Weiss were standing behind her. Ready to fight by her side, though they lacked weapons. Though it was difficult to even imagine that they would prevail against this enemy.

Team RWBY. More than that: her family.

"You have to help me," Preternatural repeated as if talking to himself. To accept help from someone like you, one of your kind, would be demeaning. But I'm not who I used to be. All that's left inside me is smoke and shadows. It's time to go..."

Preternatural dropped his head, and it bent to the point that his neck seemed to be broken. She, however, had no doubt that he could still move it with the same ease. He looked human, but he was not. Neither on the outside nor on the inside.

"There's something about you that attracts me, that digs into me, into the strata of memory. What is it? Your voice. Your face. Your eyes. Something. Something. My blood is red and thick... It's time to go!"

He threw his head back.

With that movement, the void filled with lines of golden fire. And strange symbols.

Preternatural lunged at Ruby, throwing her to the ground, straddling her.

Since she had gained her Semblance, in very few times in her life she hadn't been fast enough to react. On this occasion, she didn't even have time to think about reacting.

Yang went for it with her fists raised, not considering for a moment how she could win that fight. But she was completely immobilized by the glow that now gave off the body of Preternatural, like Blake and Weiss, who had moved shortly after her.

"Shut up. A slave like you, giving me orders?" Preternatural put his hands around her neck. But she didn't have to worry, not about that. He wouldn't kill her. "You must give me what I want. You must fix me. Put each piece back in its place."

She was still free to move and hadn't lost Crescent Rose in the fall, but decided not to attack. If she was right, and everything indicated that she was right, trying as much as possible before resorting to violence would be best.

Because, otherwise, maybe Team RWBY would come home. But not whole. And she wouldn't allow that

"How can I...?"

Her voice was cut off by an inhuman scream. It took her several seconds to realize that the scream had come out of Yang's throat. She was out of it, her face distorted, her teeth clenched like a bloodthirsty animal.

That horrible scream was punctuated by the cracking of several bones.

Yang was succeeding in resisting the power of Preternatural - surely thanks, in part, to her Semblance - advancing little by little, but it was costing her dearly. If she went on like this, perhaps she would destroy herself.

"You have what I need. You can complete me. Yes, it must be so. Because if not I am lost."

Preternatural extended a hand.

Not towards her chest or under her skirt, as she might have thought. Once she realized what hewas really trying to do, Ruby began to struggle even harder.

She should have done so much sooner. It was too late.

With that hand, he forced her to keep her left eye open.

He ripped it off with the other.

Ruby wanted to scream, but could not even muster enough air and strength to do so after that. So the scream became trapped inside her, along with the feelings she could have voiced.

Perhaps she would have begged for her life. Perhaps for the life of her companions, their life and freedom. Maybe she just wouldn't have been able to stop crying and screaming. But all that was out of her reach now. The pain seemed to increase every second, becoming a wave that washed away her brain's impulses before she could give them shape.

At some point, her sister had fallen to her knees. Everything had a limit. Even her.

Her right eye was also fading. Ruby struggled to cling to her consciousness tinged with pain and blood, knowing, deep down, that it would be useless. As she had said, everything had a limit.

Fingers of blood, dripping from the empty eye socket, caressed her cheeks, touched her neck like the hands of a strangler.

Preternatural rose to his feet. Holding her eye, intact. He looked at it, but even in the state she was in, Ruby knew there was no triumph in his gaze. Only the bottomless despair that underlayed his madness.

The gleam of Crescent Rose's blade attracted her gaze and what remained of her conscious mind. It had fallen from her hands, but it was not that far away, really. She could do it. At least she could grab it and launch one last attack while the being was distracted.

The others, once they regained full freedom of movement, would ensure that it served a purpose. She had no doubt.

But she couldn't even do that. She was not strong enough.

She was never strong enough when it counted the most.

"This will help me. I know it will," Preternatural said before turning and disappearing without a trace, with a flash of light that hurt the eyes.

Just as Minerva had done in the crypt beneath the Vatican.


	5. At the gates of

Ruby Rose was drowning in... In what?

A heavy darkness enveloped her. There were almost constant flashes of light and alien colors, which burned her retinas. She couldn't move or think of moving. It was as if she had lost her body. Or perhaps something even more important.

At times, she allowed herself to think that this was nothing more than a dream from which she would eventually awaken. And then pain mercilessly pierced through herillusions.

At last, clarity.

She saw a ghost made of ones and zeros, white like death. And she stopped being a ghost, but her body was different. More adult.

"Talk to me!" The words came out of her throat, in her own voice. But not of her own free will.

"I can't... The sun... Your son..."

Qrow, it was Qrow. Yes. She was surprised that it had taken her so long to realize it, despite everything. And that he was alive. He had tried to commit suicide, hadn't he? That's what that message implied. He had failed, then. Or this was a different universe. Or...

"Too weak. Have to replenish energy."

"Don't go!" said the other, extending her hand.

If Ruby had been in her position, in control, she would have asked about her supposed son. Since it was very clear why he had mentioned the sun. He was referring to what Minerva said. The catastrophe that had almost exterminated the human beings and those who came before.

Suddenly, she regained the sensation of her body. The real one. And the pain.

It was almost worse than drowning in that sea of darkness, full of flashes of what could have been. She stretched out a phantom hand to cover an eye that was no longer there. The smell of blood was suffocating.

_My eye! My eye!_

The ghost of Qrow, the other her, the strange space where they had met... everything disappeared. Bringing herback into the darkness.

"I will be with you until the end," said Qrow, although it was not her Qrow, and it comforted her. It was a bit like old times. When her father was there but out of reach at the same time. "Find me in the Darkness."

In the darkness.

The four years after Summer's death had been the worst ones of her life by far. The worst of a large part of the people she knew best and loved most. Her father. Qrow. Yang...

Not all of them had been bad times, bad days. Even in the deepest Darkness, one could create pleasant memories. But someday everything, good and bad, would fall into darkness. Into oblivion. Like she was doing now.

Yes, she was afraid to die. But what really terrified her, like everyone else, deep down, was fading away. And that was the idea that had taken root in her: if this continued, she would end up forgetting herself. A death worse than death.

"She's not who you think she is. Everything you hope to become, everything you yearn for... It's already gone."

She remembered what had happened, but vaguely. That she had lost an eye, but not when or how. Maybe that was a way for her brain to protect her from herself. Not something caused by the darkness. And she remembered what Preternatural was. What she... they had to do.

"It's late. Much more than you think. Late to save them."

_Late?_

_No!_

Ruby clenched his fists. Through her great willpower alone, she rebuilt her body, regaining full consciousness of herself. And she resurfaced again.

But not to the correct reality. The right place and the right time.

It was obvious. It was in a place that reminded her of the crypt where Ezio spoke to Minerva. Next to her was Weiss... No, Lucy, plus the other two. What were their names? Shaun and Rebecca.

In front of her was a sort of staircase made of clearly delimited black blocks. They led to an altar on which rested... A chill ran through her from head to toe, shaking her like a toy.

The Fragment of Eden.

She didn't like the look of this situation. But she knew that if she wanted to go back to where she belonged, she had no choice but to see this 'memory' through to the end.

"We've done it," that Ruby said.

She tried to move again and, to her surprise, discovered that she was free to do so. Her freedom would have a limit, no doubt, because what surrounded her was nothing more than a memory. Something that had already happened. But...

"I can't believe we're here," Lucy said.

They went up the stairs, with her at the head of the group, and she was the first to move. Was progression tied to her as a natural consequence of the system that allowed memories to be relived? Or had they fallen behind out of fear of the power of the Apple, as if distance could protect them from that?

Did it matter?

No. Of course not.

The Apple was illuminated by a beam of light coming from the ceiling. Which was possibly a divine sign. In her world, the gods were nothing more than ghosts that lived between words, but in this world they walked on the earth. Through life and death, apparently.

Ruby looked at her hands.

They were shaking. Not much. Not enough, she believed, to attract the attention of her comrades, if they could pay attention to those details, to make comments that departed from the script.

Would they?

Perhaps the shaking was due to the feelings of her other self, and had nothing to do with the jumble of feelings within her.

She took a deep breath. Ran her hands over her face.

The shaking calmed down, but not completely.

Was that her own decision or something that memory had compelled her to do? It sounded like a dangerously paranoid question, but, on second thought, it was reasonable. Her body was not her body. What assured her that she still had full ownership of her own thoughts and feelings?

"Where are the temples?"

She was so wrapped up in her thoughts that Shaun's voice startled her. All the more so because it was almost completely unknown to her. Because it took her several seconds to associate it with a name.

"What do I do? Do I ask?" Her mouth moved again without her consent.

"Or think about it, I don't know." Hearing Weiss's voice, even if it wasn't her Weiss, also made her feel a little better. She promised herself that she would return with them and save them from the fate tha thing had prepared for them. No matter what it took.

Instead of waiting for something to happen, she did what Weiss asked.

And the reward was immediate. The Apple came to life. Its light projected symbols into the air in front of them, symbols that appeared and disappeared like the flashes of other realities she had suffered in the depths of that darkness.

Unfortunately, none of them were familiar to her.

She had learned what Preternatural was because of the other realities, but she still did not know how to kill it, and everything she saw and heard about those beings could remedy that.

The idea of having the answer within her reach, literally and figuratively, but not being able to understand it was overwhelming.

"Are you sure you asked the right question?" Weiss asked.

"I know it," Shaun said. "I know that symbol. That's a Phrygian cap. It represents... freedom. And that, that's a Masonic eye. The two only appear together in one place."

In his thoughts, Ezio had once referred to the artifact as the fruit of the tree of good and evil, or something like that. But evidently that was not the only kind of knowledge stored in the artifact. Ruby approached with the intention of getting it out of there, of using it for her own purposes.

She closed her hands around it, but didn't complete the movement.

Becuase she couldn't move.

"What's going on? I can't move!"

Those weren't her words, but that was more or less what she was thinking. Preternatural had done something like it more than once, but this went further. The whole group was very still and very quiet. As if frozen in time.

She hadn't expected a direct response, but she received it.

"Your DNA is linked to the Apple. You have activated it."

Minerva? No, the voice was different. But it was a woman too. It couldn't be Preternatural or any other version of him.

_Besides, I'm not in danger_, she thought. _This isn't really happening to me._

"Let go of me!"

"On the seventy-second day before the awakening... You, born of our blood and that of our enemies... The end and the beginning... The hated and the adored... Starts the last journey.

There is somebody who will accompany you through the gate. That which cannot be seen. The cross darkens the horizon."

The being turned her over, made her deploy the Hidden Blade.

If she still had control of her body, she would be trembling, perhaps she would even have collapsed. Because now she was looking directly at Weiss. And although her mind refused to tie up dots, to accept reality, she was attacked by half-formed images, ghostly sensations.

The being forced her to start walking.

"What are you doing?"

"The path must be opened. You cannot escape your role. The scales must be balanced."

Ruby resisted with all her might, even though she knew that if this was a memory, there was absolutely nothing she could do to change the outcome. It was not her Weiss, but what did it matter? She' d feel her death as if she was.

Besides, she didn't want to hurt anyone.

Ruby managed to stop. For a short time, but that meant that it was possible to resist, that the efforts of her other self were of some use. She liked to think that she was contributing to a certain extent as well. It probably wasn't true, though.

"Stop, please!"

"You know so little... We must guide you."

One more step. And another. The distance between them was getting so small. If at least time was not frozen, Weiss would have had plenty of time to escape while she resisted the being. But it was. So...

So, sooner or later, that disembodied voice would win the battle. She would get what she wanted.

But that didn't mean it was okay to give up.

"Cease struggling," demanded the being, as if she had read her thoughts. From the little Ruby knew of those who came before, perhaps it was even true. Minerva had said they were not gods. But the difference between them and humans was simply too great. Was there a better way to call them?

"No!"

Ruby stopped right in front of Weiss, her teeth clenched and her face distorted by a poisonous mixture of rage and impotence.

And then, in a matter of seconds, in a cascade of images and sound, she understood the truth.

Ruby buried the Hidden Blade in Weiss' stomach.

Not because she had been forced to. Out of her own free will. Her blood began to flow, and so did time again. Weiss looked at her with eyes blurred by pain, surprise and a sense of betrayal. She would never be able to forget that image in her entire life.

"It's done. Now you just have to find her. Awaken the sixth."

Ruby lost something important inside her, something she could never recover. And it was too much for her. She collapsed along with Weiss... with Lucy, as if she, too, had been fatally wounded.

"Go. ¡Alone!"

_It's time to go_, she said before she lost consciousness.

* * *

"She isn't waking up. And her eye doesn't heal, okay? She's going to be like this for the rest of her life..."

"Calm down."

"How can I calm down?"

"That's right. There's nothing we can do. Nothing. We're at his mercy, and sooner or later, our turn will come. I... I never thought my life would end like this."

"Weiss, stop. We have to be strong. For Ruby. For... For... Think about your family, okay? Don't you want to go back to your family?"

* * *

Ruby came back to the surface.

She breathed eagerly. Her lungs burned, but the lack of oxygen was only part of the reason she couldn't breathe properly. Half blind, she crawled along the shore to a point where the water couldn't reach her.

Tears and sea water were endlessly mixing on her cheeks.

Ruby turned around, trying to regain her composure. The sky of this place was dirty. Fragments of other realities protruded from the sand around her, as if they were the remains of billions of shipwrecks, accumulated over a even longer period of time.

They were like mirrors.

Ruby closed her eyes.

_It's late. Much more than you think. Late to save them._

After a very long time Ruby opened her eyes again, stood up, albeit with great effort, and walked in a random direction. Each step was painful, but this certainly wasn't the first or the last time that she would have to go beyond her limits. It was common for a hunter. Expected, even. And she intended to fill the hole her mother had left in the world.

Unconsciously, she slipped one hand to cover what was left of her right eye.

Her eyes were one of the few physical resemblances she had to her mother.

Both Yang and her father said that anyone would notice, as soon as they saw her, that she was Summer's daughter. Her memories of her had been losing clarity over the years, but she had many photos to remember her by and looking at them was enough to see that the resemblance was not striking. Far from it.

Rather than losing the eye itself, the idea of looking less like her mother was what really angered her. Which helped her fight the pain. Fight the desire to surrender.

Just as she began to consider the idea that this space had neither beginning nor end, she saw a huge gate.

_There is somebody who will accompany you through the gate. That which cannot be seen. _

Ruby approached the gate. Inside there was only darkness.

_I will be with you until the end. Find me in the Darkness._

Ruby took a deep breath. And then she burst out laughing, not quite knowing why, not being able to control herself. Her shoulders shook. The whole body. Partly because of that, she didn't feel like herself, but had the feeling that she was still lost in a memory of a different version of herself.

"Okay," she muttered as soon as she managed to stop. "I will do what you want, whoever you are."

She crossed the threshold of the gate.

Her body disappeared, but not like the other times. It disintegrated in front of her eyes, little by little, becoming a cluster of... data. Her mind flew through the darkness and rose above it, to the other side.

To...

**MEMORY 1:** _The birth._


	6. Memory 1: The birth

_ was sitting on top of a hill. He waited and watched as he stroked the artifact resting on his left side: a golden sphere.

The committee had not yet decided what to call the artifact. He didn't care. He knew that words were nothing more than words, that they could not change what was inside. Even his own name had no special meaning for him, beyond the fact that he loved his parents and that was the name they had chosen for him.

He would like to know why they had chosen _ and not another name, but it was far from being a priority. He could count with the fingers of one hand the times he had thought about it throughout his life.

Meaning was not in words, but in the experience of living in itself. In all that it entailed. Now, for example, it was in the air that filled his lungs, the glow of the sphere under his hand and between his fingers, and many other things. That he was here, doing this, seeing what he saw, and not somewhere else, seeing and doing different things.

Perhaps his point of view had something to do with the fact that he was not good at putting his feelings into words. Maybe. But it was also true, as he saw things.

He didn't consider himself particularly intelligent, but he wasn't stupid either. He understood that meaning could be found in things more abstract than experience, even though words were unnecessary for that.

He didn't like to think about it, though. Because he had nothing like that inside him.

If someone asked him if he wanted to die, _ could say no without lying. But he didn't have a particular reason to go on living either. He saw his peers getting drunk on their abstract causes, their lofty goals... and he didn't understand them.

He didn't understand them. But did he want to?

_ wasn't sure what the right answer to that question was. But at least he believed that it was of no use to him or anyone else to pretend to be something or someone they were not.

_I'm sure?_, he wondered. _Who am I, then?_

There was no answer.

Nor had he expected one.

_ wondered how They thought. How They saw the world to which they had been dragged and bound.

Again he looked at the tower, the tower at the foot of the hill, surrounded by mountains, on which a group of Them worked. He watched their silhouettes and the flying sparks as if he had never seen anything like it in his life.

They must hate them, that's for sure. Because They only existed because of their people, but in a world that was not theirs. And it never would be. Their lives were decided, day after day, by beings who They couldn't understand. And they were so weak, too.

So fragile. He had lived for so long that time had ceased to have meaning, had become nothing more and nothing less than a succession of moments, a good part of which he didn't even remember well. He knew that many of Them, on the other hand, would not endure even fifty full rotations of the planet.

He had no idea what it would be like to live like that.

He took the sphere with both hands, deposited it on his lap and stared at it as if he were seeing something there apart from the golden glow it gave off.

After a while he heard footsteps behind him.

It was not his imagination. Not the whisper of the wind through the grass, or anything like that. He was very sure of that and he didn't care. That was one of the many other things that separated him and his people from Them. The sense of danger. The feeling that your life could end at any moment.

Maybe they were an error of nature, one among many. And the life of their creations, which were short and defective because of their role as tools, because they were designed to be used and thrown away, was the example to follow.

Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.

If he shared his thoughts with another, all sorts of rumors would spread like wildfire in a few days at the latest. They would look at him funny wherever he went, they would call him crazy. And in the worst case, he would end up behind bars.

Of that, at least, he was sure.

"I didn't think I'd find you here."

He lifted his head to look at the new arrival.

"And I didn't think you'd be looking for me today. But now that you're here, have a seat. Enjoy the view. If I may say so, I hope you enjoy the company as well."

Aita laughed softly, sat next to him.

"It's strange that you feel like joking. And even stranger that you are sitting here, doing nothing but quietly looking at the scenery. Has something happened?

"Yes," he touched his forehead with the tip of a finger, without enterely letting go of the sphere. "Right here."

"I'm not the most insightful of our brothers and sisters, but I have enough insight to realize that you don't want to talk about it, so I won't insist.

"I'm afraid I'll be insistent, however. I like you, Aita. And don't let it go to your head. But I don't believe for a second that you came here on a day off just to greet me and hang out with me. Neither you or I are like that."

Aita laughed again. This time with a little more energy.

-Very perceptive. Yes, you're right. That's not the only reason. The truth is... Juno and I are getting married, and I wanted you to know that.

_ spun the sphere. Once, twice, three times.

"Uh-huh. Everybody saw that coming a long time ago, but congratulations."

Aita looked at him from the corner of his eye.

"I have heard and seen with my own eyes what you mean to each other. I have never spoken to Juno about... well, you and her. But I thought..."

"That I could be a problem? Don't worry. I don't know what made you believe that, but our bond isn't like that. Even though our names are so similar, as if we were meant to be together. For me... " One more spin, as he organized his thoughts. "She is like a mother to me."

"Juno is much more recent than you."

"Does it matter?"

Aita thought for a long time, in silence.

"No, I suppose not." He rose to his feet. "Thank you for clearing things up for me. One last question: what is that artifact?

_ lifted the sphere with one hand.

"You don't know? It serves to create illusions, among other things. I'm afraid you'll have to wait until it becomes official to know the details."

"Spoilsport."

"Not by choice."

"I know, but you're a spoilsport," Aita said, sticking out his tongue, with a child-like smile that didn't fit with his hard face at all. _ knew Juno well enough to guess that smile was the main physical attraction she had found in Aita.

Innocence. Feeling attracted to what you lacked was the most normal thing in the world.

He said goodbye, stood up and left, leaving _ alone with his thoughts.

Now that there were no more distractions, his sight was consumed again by the sphere in his hands. And the sparks that flew inside that tower.

The sphere could do several things. Besides being a weapon, it was a way of storing knowledge, which was what suddenly interested him most. He wondered if he could extract the mind of one of Them, check their memories, their thoughts, how and what their felt...

Maybe even live a little as They did. Even if it was only possible within the reach of the memories of the being he chose.

An electric shock left _ trembling. The sphere almost slipped from his hands, which would have been a disaster in more ways than one.

A moment ago, _had nothing. Without warning, now he had gained everything. For the first time in a long time, perhaps for the first time in his long life, he could see a clear path to the future and a meaning in everything he would do along that path, even if it seemed unimportant.

_ smiled from ear to ear.

* * *

_It's him, but at the same time he's not_, Ruby thought, floating in the darkness like a baby in the womb. _For right now he is but a shadow of that person. A ghost._

And then came the next memory, and she wasn't able to think anymore.


	7. Memory 2: The ascent

_ entered the tower.

Any one of them could enter at any time, without a pass, a particular reason, or anything of the sort. And he, fortunately, was no exception. He would have had a hard time making up a convincing excuse.

He considered himself a good liar, out of necessity, but even the best liars lied badly about something.

In his case, that something was the things that mattered most to him.

And what mattered so much to him, what had brought him here, was nothing more than a desperate idea. A mirage. Which said a lot about him. What he lacked.

He looked around as if he didn't know what he was going to see. As if he hadn't seen those things a thousand times.

The heat, the sparks, and Them, which were gears of a great machine as immutably as the gears of the machines they were forced to use. And as easy to replace as any of those gears. Obviously.

Many of Them looked at him as he passed by. They were aware of their situation, of which and how the species that had created them was. But seeing one of his kind from so close by was not something they were used to.

Of course, the same could be said the other way around.

Within this small world, he was the one who stood out, who was out of place. His superior height, the color of his eyes. Almost everything, really.

He continued to look around, but this time he looked primarily at the eyes of each of the beings around him. He wondered what they thought of him. Wondering if they feared him, if they thought he was here to punish them or something.

Beating up or killing one of them not only made no sense, but was extremely counterproductive, for a broken tool only slowed everyone down. But even so, _ had no doubt that some of his kind used them as convenient toys that they could break.

He didn't like that idea, and couldn't say why.

He noticed a girl... no, a woman already, or so he thought. It was difficult to distinguish because of the differences between their species. In any case, she was very small in terms of height, even by their standards.

And she had silver eyes. A very rare and striking colour. In fact, it was the main reason that he had noticed her, when he was surrounded by women and men not very different from her.

So he went to her.

She, like everyone else, if they had looked at him, it hadn't been for long. She was still working, pretending nothing had changed. On second thought, it was true. What did his appearance change? This job, from sunrise to sunset, was what their lives consisted of. Without exception. An eternal cycle of exhausting work and too little rest.

_You are dead. All of you_, he thought. _Dead_.

He grabbed that woman by the arm, forcing her to turn around, to look at him. There was no fear in her eyes. But maybe she was just good at hiding it.

_ grabbed her chin, moved her head from left to right.

Meanwhile, she didn't look down, or say anything. Her expression did not change one iota. He didn't want her to be afraid of him, that would be bad, but for her not to react to what he was doing was simply too strange.

What if they were just tools, after all? Machines that were only aware of themselves enough to learn how to better carry out their tasks.

In that case, there was no hope for him. At least, not in them. He feared he was too tired to pursue another mirage. So he just couldn't accept that.

_ lowered his hand.

-What's your name? -he asked.

A chill shook his body. No, that wasn't the best way to put it. He had the feeling that there were insects crawling under his skin, between his bones, in his blood vessels, everywhere. He didn't feel like himself.

That should be a good feeling, because he didn't want to be who he had been all of these years. He didn't want to die empty. But he... But he didn't like it.

The woman reacted for the first time. She looked at him as if he had told her that the sky was on ground and the ground in the sky.

"Don't you have a name?" he insisted, seeing that she was not breaking the silence.

"What do you mean?" Her voice was soft, but it didn't lack strength. On the contrary. She didn't seem to be a weak and docile slave, although that was precisely what all of them were, without exception.

That shouldn't have surprised him, but it did.

Names were meaningless, but they were necessary up to a point. Without them, society cannot function normally.

But was there a society here, in any of the other towers? Or something close to the concept of society? Surely not, but not for lack of the ability to feel and reason, but because they only knew how to live as they had been taught. Even the most intelligent animal couldn't get very far in anything without the necessary foundation.

It was sad, but true.

"What you hold in your hand," _ said slowly and clearly, "is a hammer. That is what I mean. That is a name. A way of referring to yourself. To distinguish you from all those who are like you."

It wasn't the best explanation he could have come up with. He had the feeling that it would only confuse her more, not the other way around. It was soon proved that he was right. As usual.

"A hammer is a hammer," she replied hesitantly after a short while, "no matter how many there are in the world."

She seemed deeply uncomfortable, and he didn't blame her for it. Those who were secretly listening to their conversation seemed,for the most part, pleased. But only because he hadn't bothered them. Taken them out of the security of their routine, no matter how exhausting it was, in body and soul.

"If that's what you think," _ diplomatically said. "That's a hammer, on that we both agree, apparently. What are you?"

The woman frowned. Her brow was covered with sweat, as if the effort she was making trying to find an answer was not merely mental. _ considered telling her to forget it and try her luck with another member of the species, but... but no. Something inside him was attracted by her. It told him that if there was hope, she was the only one who could give it to him. That she was special.

Maybe it was just the nonsense of a tired old man. Maybe it was. Or maybe it wasn't.

"I don't know," she finally admitted. "Does it matter? Can I go back to my job?"

_That again._

"Do you want to work?"

"No. But I have to work."

"So at least you understand that, huh? -_ took a deep breath. He extended his right hand towards her. He had come to a decision after which there would be no turning back. Come with me and I'll show you the truth about the world you live in. Everything behind these four walls.

"The outside world... -the woman muttered, as if talking to herself.

"Yes," he took a step forward. The world in which you were born, the world that was stolen from you, is within your reach. It may seem like a cruel joke, but that world is not ours. It doesn't belong to anyone. Do you understand what I'm trying to say?

She nodded hesitantly.

"Come."

"I don't want to."

_ grabbed her by the arm, digging his fingers into her skin without a glance.

"I'm not going to give you a choice." He started for the exit, pulling her gently. As long as she didn't resist, there was no need to do anythin else. "Don't make that face. I don't know how many years you've lived, but you should be completely used to this. It's what your life is all about. Your job. Isn't it?"

He thought of stopping and saying a few words to those gathered there to make sure they would not talk, but he thought better of it. He was certain that none of them would make the extra effort to inform the next member of their species that would pass by about what had happened.

Moreover, before anyone else did, he would already be back, along with the woman who was behind him. Doing what he wanted them to do wouldn't take long.

In the best case scenario.

After passing through the main gate, _ withdrew the as yet unnamed device from the interior of his robe. He had begun to think of it as the Apple, however. Not for any special reason. Because of its shape. It was as good a name as any.

Using its power, he became invisible to himself and the woman.

It was a bit inconvenient, but necessary. If the woman was seen outside the tower, she would be executed. And he... Perhaps he wouldn't suffer the same fate, but perhaps it wouldn't be a good thing.

And he took her all over town, little by little, trying to make as little noise as possible. At some point, she stopped being a dead weight and started walking beside him. Her enthusiasm was almost palpable. The way her eyes glowed was mesmerizing.

Silver was the color of steel, of weapons, of death. But somehow, in her eyes it was a pure and beautiful color like a child's smile.

When those eyes became misty, covered with pain and nostalgia, if one could feel nostalgia for what they had never experienced, something inside _ crumbled.

The end point of the stroll turned out to be the top of a hill. From there they had a perfect view of the entire city, its whites, grays and golds gleaming in the sunlight, but he had brought her here not because of that, but simply because it was a secluded place.

That didn't mean that no one would pass through there, of course. This was precisely where he had had his last conversation with Aita, after all. Which is why he didn't remove the invisibility.

It was better to be safe than sorry.

"What do you think?" _ asked.

She looked away. Still, he didn't overlook the tears that suddenly ran down her cheeks. It would have been practically impossible to do such a thing. And the same was true for the slight tremor in her small shoulders.

"This world is so big," she said, again, in a surprisingly firm voice, "but mine is so, so small. Why does it have to be like this?"

"It doesn't. As I said, you and yours can change things. With a little help from me.

"What do you mean?" she asked slowly and after a while.

"I will teach you all sorts of things about the world, everything you will need to not only survive, but prevail, and you will spread my teachings among those you trust. Together we will create a great chain that will strangle this society. That will reduce it to ashes so that it can revive in a greater form.

The nameless woman looked into his eyes for the first time since they had set foot upon the hill.

"Why would you betray your own? What do you gain from this?"

"Do you really care?"

"I don't see the point. And that matters to me now."

_ nodded. It was as good a reason as any, he supposed. He made no immediate response, but only because he wanted to think about how best to put it into words. She deserved the effort, the discomfort.

And, besides, that also helped him.

"Because I feel alive." It wasn't much of an answer, but it was the truth, and it would have to do.

"I don't understand you."

"I'd be scared if you did. Because not even I understand myself."

The woman, unexpectedly, started laughing. Her laugh was as sweet as a spring.

"And you're becoming strange. Because of me. When you go back among your own people, you won't find anyone like you."

"I've been alone all my life." There was no sadness or pain in her voice, she was just stating a fact. It was almost as if it had nothing to do with her. Was she protecting herself or were those her real feelings? "But that's changed today, too."

_ looked at her in surprise.

"So you're going to support me?"

"If you hadn't come, I would have lived the rest of my life that way and died with a smile on my face. But now that I know everything I don't have... Everything I don't have and _should_ have, I couldn't stand that. Of course I'll support you. I'll do whatever it takes to live in this world. Anything."

_ nodded and stared at the city. He could no longer refer to it as "his city".

She was a strange woman, but he was no different in that respect. He was thinking of starting a rebellion, murdering members of his own kind in favor of another, one that hated or would hate those like him, and he didn't feel guilty or shaken. He didn't feel any particularly intense emotions.

And why would he?

After all, the blood-stained future on the horizon was his salvation.

* * *

**Author's Note**

I apologize to the people who thought this story was dead, and I direct this to those who were happy about it and the few, if such people exist, who felt disappointed. The truth is much less exciting: I simply forgot the password and was too lazy to change it for the umpteenth time. Until today, of course.


	8. Memory 3: The fall

Unlike the first two memories of Preternatural, whatever his real name was, Ruby retained the ability to think when she dived into them. But not for a good reason. She was sure of that.

All one had to do was look around.

The world was divided into what appeared to be deeply embedded crystals, wet with blood, streaked with lines as black as the darkness between the stars. All this blurred the boundary between the darkness before the memory and the memory itself. She assumed that this was the reason why she could think consciously. She was here, but not entirely.

Like... other things.

There were people around her, dying or already dead from the devastation. But no matter how carefully she looked, she couldn't tell the difference in many cases, because those people were shadows. Some were moving, struggling to survive. Others did not, but she couldn't assume that all those who didn't move were dead.

Ruby shook her head. Her neck popped like a dry twig, the pain making her dizzy.

The... The shadows were unimportant. What really mattered was that, clearly, other people shouldn't appear like that. What really mattered was that the devastation she was experiencing

_The sun... Your son._

Ruby crawled through the rubble in no particular direction.

Again, she wasn't sure if she was in control of her actions or if she was just the body and Preternatural - that is, the copy that existed within the memory - was the brain, constantly sending her commands by means of confusing impulses.

The idea troubled her, of course, but what was truly frightening was that it could not only be applied to this system of reliving memories so similar to the Animus.

Who was she? What was it that made her who she was?

The self, the personality, the soul... Whatever you call it, did it really exist? Or was it just an illusion created and maintained by a biological machine for which patterns were so important that it saw patterns where there was nothing, just chaos, just smoke and mirrors?

She was in pain all over. She didn't want to look down, because she was sure she would see something that would shock her, even though it wasn't her body. Nor the body of a person she cared about.

Standing up, even for a few seconds, to rest and catch her breath, was unthinkable. She would most likely not be able to get back on he rfeet. Most likely, she would give up. And then she would end up like the lost souls that wandered around her.

The smell of smoke and flame protected her from the smell of blood, but there was nothing to protect her from the screams. Those howls that sounded more like those of a dying animal than a human being. Or a Grimm.

Nothing to protect her or anyone else from the sounds of buildings collapsing. Of a whole world tumbling down.

I'm going to die here, she thought with strange certainty.

After a while, she finally stopped. Not on her own will. Her body just couldn't take it anymore. She still refused to look, but... she had the feeling that there was a sizeable hole in her side. And she could feel the blood sticking to her skin. It burned more intensely than any flame.

Next to him... her, was that human woman.

Maybe that's why he stopped, and not just by coincidence. In any case, at their first meeting she had thought the other girl looked almost nothing like her, but now it was like seeing her own dead body. It was even more terrible because she was fully clothed and intact. Not even a few drops of blood stained her.

It just didn't seem real. But she was dead.

His arms wrapped around the woman's body, drawing her to his chest. He rocked her slowly back and forth, and he moved with her, shaking from head to toe.

She was cold. So cold that it seemed like an illusion in that world engulfed by flame.

And that would never change. He would never again feel her warmth, her hands on his body, her breath on his neck. And worst of all, he would never hear his name from her lips again, a name that had been special to him since she first uttered it.

And the last time... The last time...

He didn't dare finish the sentence. Or even remember.

He couldn't bear to live without her, with nothing but memories, for hundreds of thousands of years. Not even for minutes, if he died in this disaster, like so many others of his kind. How could anyone bear to get everything they had wished for and lose it all soon after, in such a stupid way? So arbitrary?

Something inside his mind unraveled. Something important, something he couldn't possibly repair, and he burst out laughing for no reason. At the top of his lungs.

"Ruby," he said with laughter that was the tears he couldn't shed. "Ruby... Ruby."

The name pierced her as violently as a sword, tearing her apart.

Pushing her out of the memory and into the darkness. The relief of not thinking and feeling was immediate, but it faded as quickly as it had come.

In other words, Ruby Rose opened her eyes.

Well, the only eye she still had.

The right side of her vision was alight with golden fire. There was no trace of the enemy, which was for the best. For the time being. It was clear to her what to do and how to do it, but she needed a little time to rest and recover. Get her head around everything she had seen and heard.

And the loss of her left eye. Now that she was back in her body, she couldn't help but think about it. For obvious reasons, it was more real. All of it

"Ruby! Oh, sis. Sis." Yang's arms, her warmth. Instead of feeling comforted, a chill rocked her.

Because she hadn't seen or heard it coming, and that didn't bode well. Yes, she was distracted, half asleep, but that was no excuse. Especially since he could show up in a moment. She had no idea how long she'd been unconscious. How long it would take for him to realize that the eye he had plucked out couldn't save him, if he was sane enough to do so in the first place.

As far as she knew, even in the delusions of people with mental illness there was a sort of thread of logic, even if it was complete nonsense. But she couldn't see where he'd gotten the idea that one of her eyes could help him somehow-save him, even-and that bothered her.

Yet that was the least of her problems, not something worth thinking about.

Was she trying to distract herself? To postpone the inevitable?

With the exception of Weiss, perhaps, the Semblances somehow reflected the person who possessed her. Yang grew stronger every time she was hurt because that was the only way she knew how to deal with sadness, and her Scene responded especially well to anger because she was angry at herself, the mother who had abandoned her, and the whole world.

Blake... She didn't know her well enough to even interpret it, but the meaning of her own Semblance was more than clear. For her and all the people in Patch, surely.

She was the kind of person that ran away. Fled from everything.

She was trying to turn her Semblance into a strength, not a weakpoint, but even if she succeeded, the truth would not change.

Ruby was able to separate Yang from her. Effortlessly. When she felt his hands on her shoulders, her sister made no effort to resist. Probably for fear of hurting her in the process.

Ruby looked into her eyes.

"I saw... things. While I was unconscious."

"What do you mean?"

Ruby hesitated. Come to think of it, it seemed crazy. What guaranteed that the memories she'd relived were real and not just part of a strangely vivid and logical dream?

But this had been madness from the start. So what was the point of clinging to common sense when the nightmare was finally coming to an end?

"Prepare yourselves, girls. Now I know our enemy. And I know what we must do."


	9. The fruit of the tree of knowledge

**The fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil**

"What are you talking about?" Yang said.

What a question.

Ruby stood up, albeit with some effort, doing her best to hide how weak she was. That even standing was something that required a conscious effort on her part. She had to be strong. Always, but especially when others were faltering.

That, of course, made her think of her mother. Her image of the strength and elegance that a huntress should have. Almost everything about her chosen path in life brought her back to her mother.

Of course.

"I know what it takes to end all our problems, to get home. What else?"

She saw skepticism, fear and worry, not necessarily in that order. And not just in her sister's face. It would have been strange if they had reacted differently, but, even so, she felt a twinge of pain in herchest.

_They don't trust me. Not enough. And I don't know how to convince them._

"Listen," said her dear older sister, and in her eyes and voice there was a shadow of the worst days of both of them. "You've been unconscious for hours, days, I don't fucking know. You haven't had time to find out anything new. To think. And now... You just woke up. Take a moment, take a deep breath, and a"admit that you're not thinking clearly."

Yang touched her shoulder.

Ruby brushed her hand aside, slapping it and destabilizing herself in the process. Creating a crack in the illusion that she was still as strong as ever. Which had not been very stable in the first place. She was willing to admit it.

Yang looked at her as if she didn't recognize her anymore. Ruby tried hard to keep her eyes on her.

"While I was unconscious, I saw his memories, among other things. That's why I know what to do. I know it sounds crazy, but this whole thing has been crazy from the beginning. " She took a deep breath. "You have to believe me. You all have to believe me.

She looked around.

Had their expressions changed a bit for the better, had she made any progress at all, however small, or were those signs just her imagination?

"It's not easy," said Blake in her normal tone, that is, a disaffected one. "Especially if you don't explain yourself."

"There is no time for explanations. He could come back any minute. We've already lost too much time. No, don't say anything! Even if this was all a baseless idea, who'd bet they have a better plan than me?

"No one"? I thought so."

The silence stretched out dangerously, but in the end it didn't have to be her who broke it. Weiss did, to her surprise.

"I know we have to do something, whatever it is, before it's too late. But... At least give us a reason to believe that we won't walk to our deaths. Tell us he has some kind of a weak spot."

With every second that went by, there was more chance that Preternatural would come back to torment her and would catch them off guard. She knew that well, they must have known that too, without her having to tell them.

Apparently she had no choice.

"Yes," she said slowly and clearly, sorting out her thoughts as she went along. Words were not her thing. They never had been and never would be. But she was painfully aware that the way she expressed herself mattered as much, if not more, than the message itself. "He seems to have unlimited power because of this space, which he shapes as he pleases. That space was born of him, but it is not his. Not entirely. It's a sham. The background of a play. What I suggest is that we change the current farce to one that favours us. I'll do that, and in the meantime you'll go and find him and give me enough time to do it. Any questions?"

She was being vague, but she couldn't have been much clearer. She didn't quite understand it herself.

Besides, she had lied to them about a very important detail. She didn't have a clue what to do to get rid of Preternatural. But she hoped to gain that knowledge by manipulating the void in which they found themselves.

"Many of them. But I can imagine how you will respond," Yang said. "Anyway, both you and Weiss are right. We don't have that much time. And something has to be done."

_It's about time_, she thought.

"You call it him now,' said Blake.

Ruby grimaced. Always so perceptive.

"Yes. I did. Like I said, I saw his memories. I still hate him. I still think he can hardly be considered human. But I feel sorry for the person he was. He was thrown to the ground and he wasn't able to stand up. It wasn't the same for me, but almost. And I understand what that's like. I think we all do."

Another... Well, no, it wasn't a lie. But it was close enough.

After her mother's death, which managed to drag her to the ground, she had eventually gotten up only because of Yang. If it wasn't for her, she'd still be lying there. She hadn't been strong enough to stand up on her own.

Maybe Preternatural could have recovered, but he'd been alone. He hadn't been as lucky as her.

A small part of her wanted to help him, but even that part of her, so childish, knew that there was no one who could save him. That he was too far gone. But she could give him peace, though of a different nature than the one he was searching for.

The peace of death.

"Are you really prepared to kill him?" asked Blake, as if she'd read her thoughts. "And yes, I feel the need to ask you that. Despite what he's done to you."

Ruby put a hand to her face, covering the empty socket of her left eye, which was suddenly beating like a second heart, sending intense waves of pain through her body. Of course, that had been the case since she had awakened. Now she was only more aware of these sensations.

Or perhaps it was not quite so simple. Perhaps, in this place, the pain was as real as anything else. It didn't have to follow a thread of logic.

"Of course. I am and I will. With my own hands. But not without help. Come on, let's get to it!"

After a moment, they did just that.

Ruby slipped into the darkness alone.

* * *

The darkness was endless and impenetrable. In a space like that, with nothing like points of reference, it would be completely impossible to know if they were retracing their steps as soon as they changed direction. So they didn't. They always walked in a straight line, although they hadnt talked about it to decide.

That didn't guarantee them success, of course. The darkness was not endless, but certainly greater than they thought, and that creature could be anywhere. To the left, to the right, behind or in front.

It could be closer to Ruby than to them. Moreover, if she was right and the creature could manipulate this space at will, the concept of distance had no meaning.

Under these conditions she couldn't even imagine the possibility of it being defeated.

It was better not to think about things she couldn't change.

Blake looked back briefly. No sign of the creature, and no sign of Ruby either, they had left her behind long ago. Or perhaps not so long ago, for every second seemed to last a full minute.

If she was so worried, she couldn't imagine how Yang would be now, because had so much more to lose than her own life and a friend of a few months. It was a cold thought, perhaps, but true. She cared about this team as well as her partners, including Weiss, surprisingly.

Losing them would destroy her, but not because of them, but because of what they represented. The loss of her second chance and her new future.

It was too early for anything more.

_I want to do good, but I never thought of myself as a good person. _Still, she felt sick.

The important thing about second chances was change. And if this was a change, it wasn't for the better, which is what mattered.

"Do you think it's true?" Weiss asked.

"I believe in my little sister."

"But that's not really an answer.

"Yes, it is. If not even I trusted her at a time like this, who would? Maybe it's true. Maybe it's not. I don't think we're in a position to deny anything outright, however implausible it may seem. In any case, she will lead us to victory. I don't have any room for doubt about that."

And she seemed to believe it, too.

Ruby was a good leader and could probably beat her in a fight nine times out of ten, even though she was much more experienced than her. Blake would trust her without hesitation while fighting a horde of Grimm or criminals like Roman, but this... This was a very different story.

"Yang..." Blake said. "You're a great sister."

"I think so, too."

Blake laughed softly in response.

_When this is over, can we get back to normal? Or will my laughter sound so false forever and ever, the words exchanged between us, even the little jokes, so tense and forced?_

She clenched her fists.

They weren't yet important enough for their loss to shatter her . But she needed them, just as she needed the hundreds of little things they shared every day.

Then she heard something like footsteps and smelled blood, and realized that she could lose all of that very soon.

"He's here."

"About time," Yang said, raising her fists.

Weiss drew her sword. She looked as frightened and young and vulnerable as she herself undoubtedly did.

The creature came out of the darkness. But not as if he had come close enough for them to see him, but as if the darkness were made of paper and had pierced it, tearing it apart.

Seeing that, what Ruby had said seemed more believable.

He no longer seemed like a pathetic human being or an inhuman god from beyond the stars. He looked like a living corpse, barely strong enough to stand, clad in filthy rags, his body covered in golden lines that glowed faintly.

His left eye was distorted and surrounded by blood and eye fluid.

It took Blake several seconds to realize that must be Ruby's lost eye, not his own. He believed that eye could save him from his doom and therefore had replaced it. But if that had changed anything, it had been for the worse. No doubt about it.

She stifled a scream.

It was the most terrible thing she'd ever seen. His appearance was pitiful, but she had no illusions that he would be easy to kill. Ruby had said it was all a farce. His appearance, therefore, was also part of that farce. A kind of representation of how he was feeling now, perhaps.

Or perhaps she was thinking too much about it and that was simply his true appearance, after all his pretensions were torn away from him.

The same pathetic being that had lured them here, tormented them, and abused Ruby again and again. In time, despite what he had said, he would have crossed the line and destroyed poor little Ruby.

By then, all three of them would have been dead or wishing they were, probably.

Blake pulled out Gambol Shroud. She prepared for battle.

"Ruby," Blake shook violently at the sound of his voice. "Ruby, where are you? I need you. I can't see the path any more..."

If she didn't move now, she would never be able to.

Blake was the first to go on the attack.

But the creature moved with blinding speed, grabbing her fist and stopping her attack at the last moment. Its skin was as hot as the inside of a blast furnace.

"You're not her. Get out of my sight, you damn impostor!"

The creature released her as one of her clones appeared behind him, and Blake took the opportunity to put as much distance between them as possible while Yang and Weiss advanced.

That look. And that voice... It made him think of Adam for two reasons.

The last time she'd been this close to death had been at his hands, for betraying the White Fang, at least as Adam saw it. He had let her go, in the end, true. But despite all they had been through together, despite what bound them together, he had hesitated.

Because of the burning madness that enveloped him almost like a physical presence.

Blake took a deep breath.

She rushed to help her teammates, but her right leg froze in the middle of the first step. A golden light spread through the void without light, leaving them all in the same state of paralysis.

Not a complete paralysis. Yang had been able to resist the first time, and she was succeeding this time too. But she could feel the energy pouring through her body, threatening to even bring her heart to a halt.

The first time, they hadn't been able to do anything about it. This time...

This time...

Ruby had said that all this was an illusion.

Blake made a decision in a split second. She lifted Gambol Shroud up and stabbed it into one of her legs, violently, without hesitation, above the knee and even to the other side. The paralyzing effect helped her to drown out the scream that crawled up her throat.

The blood poured out, gathering in a puddle below her, and she nearly lost her balance as she pulled her leg back and through the puddle. She clenched her teeth.

She could move freely. At least for the moment.

And to think that it would work, when this is something I read in a fantasy book that I barely even remember anymore. She felt like laughing for a moment, but she held back. She was hysterical. Unstable.

Arming himself with all her rage and pain, Blake pounced on the creature and stabbed it in the chin. Gambol Shroud smashed his jaw, blew out a few teeth, and splattered blood before it came out through one of the creature's cheeks.

Now it seemed even more monstrous than before.

Its blood was red like that of a human being, but it didn't look like a human being at all.

The creature smiled at her as the blood continued to cascade from his mouth to his neck and down his chest.

_If I had pierced his brain, would he still be standing, smiling at me like that_, she wondered as her heart pounded like it was about to explode. Because she suspected what the right answer was. He wouldn't have flinched. If that were true, she really hoped that Ruby knew what she was doing, that her plan would not fade away soon after waking, like a dream.

Along with the lives of the four of them.

_None of the great, true obstacles in my life seem surmountable. Adam and the White Fang, the oppression to which my people are constantly subjected, and now this creature._ The blood in her leg seemed to fall with the same rhythm as her heartbeat. _Wherever I go, whatever I do, I always feel so weak, so useless..._

Blake screamed from the bottom of her throat. And she did what would prove to be perhaps the most stupid thing in her life.

She pushed the blade in further instead of pulling it out hastily, engaging in a contest of strength with the creature. As expected, she soon found that he had the upper hand, and it was too late to put distance between them. Not without dropping her weapon, and that would be too dangerous.

Once the creature had the weapon in its possession, it would shatter it like a toy and she be left defenseless.

The edge was getting closer and closer to her neck.

But she was going to die anyway, at this rate.

_I have to let go_, she thought.

_I have to..._

Yang joined her, placing one hand on her, which was on the handle of the sword, and the other on the edge, near the creature, pushing with both hands.

The creature recoiled, staggering, and Gambol Shroud's blade ripped off another good chunk of skin and flesh. For what it was worth.

Weiss hit the creature like a projectile, knocking it to the ground, then flipped backwards, using one of her glyphs. She landed on her feet, but badly, not with her usual elegance. She almost ended up in the same state as the enemy.

The creature rose.

They attacked together. They couldn't afford to give it the slightest bit of breathing room.

* * *

Eventually, Ruby stopped short and sat down with her legs crossed.

She needed... the Apple. Nothing less than that would do to kill Janus. A weapon made by his own kind. This whole place was an illusion, so perhaps the Apple was at the center of it all, waiting to be found. And if it wasn't, or couldn't be found, a replica could always be built.

But how?

Diving into Janus' mind had left footprints, traces of other memories, and those traces made her think it was possible. Unfortunately, the steps to be taken eluded her.

Eventually she got an idea.

A very bad idea, but it was the only one she had. So she carried it out immediately. In other words, she closed her eyes, laid down, and stopped thinking. She did everything she could to fall asleep in circumstances like these, where every lost second could cost her life, or worse, the lives of her friends and sister.

When she regained consciousness of herself, Ruby found herself floating above a snow"covered ancient castle. That was perhaps the most beautiful sight she had ever had the pleasure of seeing in her entire life. What's more, this place made her feel, for some reason, like she had come home.

The ancient castle had retained its dignity over time, though not a soul inhabited it any longer and the only sounds that echoed through its halls were the voices of the phantoms and the howling of a cold, lonely wind.

She saw traces of all the blood that had been shed by the former dwellers first in the name of peace, then of freedom. For better or for worse.

She saw a woman dying in the arms of an old man in a white hooded robe, and saw the old man flee, pursued by those who had been his brothers. She had a sense of the path the rest of that old man's life would take. She heard a deafening shot and then...

You're right, Abbas. I learned a lot from the Apple.

About life and death, the past and the future. Let me show you.

Then it went from light to dark.

A skeleton on a chair accompanied her, spending like that his eternal rest, and Jaune. Only she couldn't think of him as Jaune, for he had nothing in common with the Jaune of his world, save for the face. It took her several seconds to remember his name.

Ezio. Ezio Auditore da Firenze, yes.

An Assassin at the heart of the Order of Assassins. Masyaf, a fortress that rested on top of a mountain, eternally watching a small part of the humanity that the Assassins were dedicated to protecting.

She followed Ezio, who left Altair's skeleton behind, and activated the mechanism hidden in the wall to discover what he had locked up inside.

_The Apple!_

Ezio reached out to it. At the last moment he thought better of it, he dropped his hand. His face, which she shouldn't be able to see in the impenetrable darkness of that crypt, changed subtly.

"Another artifact? No. You will stay here." He took a step backwards. "I've seen enough for one life."

Yet the device activated itself, illuminating the tomb that... Altair had built for himself.

"Ruby?

He's talking to me? That couldn't be true, of course. This was nothing more than a memory. It had already happened. It would happen billions of times in exactly the same way or with subtle differences, in billions of worlds close enough to this one.

But this particular variation had already happened, it was set in stone. He couldn't be talking to her.

Even so, she couldn't help but think that when he heard her name fromo his lips.

No one could blame her for that.

"I've heard your name once, Ruby, a long time ago. And now it lingers in my mind, like an image from an old dream. I don't know where you are, or how you can hear me. But I know you're listening to me.

Ezio discarded his Hidden Blades, even his sword.

He wasn't giving up. There wasn't a single enemy near him, he had taken care of them all. So discarding his weapons was only a symbolic gesture to give due respect to the life he was about to leave behind. A struggle and a lifestyle that had consumed him since his father and brothers had been executed, consuming most of his life.

Now he was an old and tired man, a little wrinkled, graying only a little, and yet there was nothing left of that young man on his face. Not even in his eyes.

"I have lived my life as best I could, not knowing its purpose, but drawn forward like a moth to a distant moon. And here, at last, I discover a strange truth. That I am only a conduit for a message that eludes my understanding. Who are we, who have been so blessed to share our stories like this? To speak across centuries?

Maybe you will answer all the questions I have asked. Maybe you will be the one to make all this suffering worth something in the end."

Ruby got her body back.

She was no longer outside of memory, existing as a mere observer, barely herself. Now she was part of the memory. Something that shouldn't be possible. So...

_This is really happening. Right here, right now._

_It's happening._

Ezio reached out, touched her shoulder.

The light intensified, blinding her.

When it disappeared, she was back in the void, but something had changed. The darkness was covered with deep golden lines and there was a pedestal in front of her.

She placed her hands on the pedestal.

A cascade of memories that didn't belong to her assaulted her mind. Fortunately, she was able to draw out a few clear conclusions. Enough of them.

Ruby set to work.

* * *

Enemies surrounded him from all sides. He couldn't remember their names, even their faces were blurry, but they clearly hated him and wanted to kill him. Even if he could remember the reason or reasons they hated him to that point, he wouldn't try to solve this with words.

He could see it in their eyes. There he saw their hatred, their anger, their despair. And also fear, above all. He hadn't no idea why, either.

What he was most afraid of wasn't his enemies, or even the not insignificant risk that they would succeed in killing him, but himself. The face and name of his enemies wasn't the only thing he didn't remember. He didn't even know how things ended up that way.

The last thing he remembered was...

He felt that he was about to succeed, but then the girl in blue plunged her blade into his shoulder, and the thought popped like a bubble.

"Stop it!" he screamed. He grabbed the girl by the neck, instead of going for her weapon, and crushed her throat as easily as one of those filthy monkeys could break a dry branch by accident. He threw her away, like the trash she was.

"Weiss!"

Was that her name? It sounded familiar. But that was all.

Well, it didn't matter. Really. Why bother remembering arrogant slaves who'd soon be dead? There was no possible way he could be in the wrong here. After all he'd sacrificed for them, how hard he'd fought...

He had done it for her, in reality, but the entire human race had reaped the fruits of his efforts. They should be grateful. They should... do anything but stab him in the back.

_Her?_

_What's her name? What did she look like? And while I'm at it, what's my name?_

He just stood there, staring into nothingness, trapped inside his own head. It was a simple answer that only a few unfortunate people were unable to answer.

He refused to be one of those people.

The girl in yellow and the girl in black were trying to help their companion, who was even whiter than the touches of white on her blue dress. In vain, of course. But he was only vaguely aware of that.

He was much more than that. He was important.

Names mattered.

_But her name more than any other, damn it! What was her name? It started with an R, right? R. Rebecca? Rachel? Riley?_

_No, no, no._

_Roxy?_

_Neither, but I think I'm close. She was... she was..._

A woman came out of the darkness. In her hand she held a sphere that gave off a blinding light. The enemies who remained standing turned their heads to look at her. The one who wasn't couldn't make that move. Most likely she hadn't even noticed the new arrival.

Perhaps it was for the best.

For her.

"Ruby!" he scream at the top of his lungs, writhing like a worm without moving from the spot. He couldn't remember his own name. His body wasn't his own.

But his love for her was intense and dominated him completely. He could never forget it.

* * *

"Here I am," Ruby replied. "Wait a moment."

She held up the Apple. It wasn't the real Apple, of course, but it was close enough. With its light she returned Weiss's throat to its original state. If running low on oxygen for so long, to the point where she had been on the verge of death, had caused her physical or mental damage, her Aura would take care of that. Eventually.

"Ruby. That's your name," said Janus. "Yes, yes, yes. Come with me. I can't see the path. But if you're by my side..."

"I'm not who you want me to be. That woman you're longing for wasn't named Ruby. She didn't look like me either, probably, beyond the obvious and inevitable. More importantly, she's dead. She died in your arms. You couldn't even say goodbye, but she's gone from this world. I know how that feels, believe me." She took a step forward. Janus took a step back. "But it's time to stop. How do you think she'd look at you, if she could see you now?"

"I don't know what you're talking about. Ruby, I... You've to help me.

"I don't think there's anyone who can help you. Not even me. "She looked at her friends and partners out of the corner of her eye. They all looked at her, not knowing what to think. Well, it was better that having them doubt her or interfering at the worst possible moment.

"That can't be true."

"If that's what you think, what's your name? It's a very simple question."

Janus staggered around like an empty straw doll. His new left eye, which was hers, certainly looked as cold and lifeless as that of a doll.

"Preternatural," he said after a while. Ruby was surprised he had been able to remember even that.

"No. That's not even a name. Even with this device I don't know where you got it from exactly, but that name and your initial appearance were just flashes of an identity which you held on to while losing your own. An identity you glimpsed amidst a sea of calculations."

"Stop it! Nothing you say makes any sense. You're not her, but one day I'll find her."

"Her? You're no longer sure her name was Ruby?"

"Of course I am. How can I not be sure of my beloved's name? Ridiculous. Get out of here and take those pests with you. I need to be alone. I need to think." He squeezed his head with one hand as if intending to crush it.

"You brought us here. And you're the only one who can bring us back home."

"That doesn't make sense."

"She's dead, Janus."

Janus looked at her with one eye wide open. Not the other, but only because it couldn't move.

"Yes, that's your name. Janus. You traveled far from your universe, looking for someone who could serve as a substitute for her. You lost your mind, and in the end you managed to convince yourself not only that she was still alive, but that I was her. But you know that's a lie. You're alone in the world, Janus. I would say I will let you live if you bring us home, but I know that you are too dangerous to leave you free to act, and you won't get any better. So you'll die alone too, Janus."

He went after her, silent, blindingly fast, with his bare hands.

Ruby didn't move from the spot.

Yang stood shakily and reached out to help her, not knowing that it was completely unnecessary, though not counterproductive. Fortunately.

Janus's hands only grasped air.

"What is this?" he asked no one in particular.

Ruby, who had created an illusion and become invisible so that she could approach Janus from behind, ran him through with Crescent Rose, piercing his heart. This is the weight of a life, she thought as Janus' body collapsed back against her.

It was very heavy. In spite of everything.

Janus wasn't dead. He wasn't human, he just looked it. Though he had lost his heart, he was writhing in pain and spitting out blood occasionally. That didn't mean he was going to recover. Ruby had won. His death was only a matter of time, at this point.

But it seemed that Janus didn't share the same opinion.

He grabbed Crescent Rose by the edge, as if pulling her from his chest, assuming he could manage the feat half"dead, would get him somewhere.

The world fell apart before her eyes. The black was painted pure white, and things floated there like shards of glass. Yang, Weiss and Blake had disappeared without a trace. Only herself and Janus remained, in the same position as a moment ago.

_I see_, she thought.

She still had Crescent Rose, but not the replica of the Apple of Eden she had built with her own hands.

"Please," he said with the voice of a child. "You don't understand, I have to find her. I have to see her one more time, at least, before..."

"Maybe you'll see each other again some day. But in this life it's not going to happen."

Ruby pulled Crescent Rose from her chest. Janus collapsed, began to crawl away from her, blinded by fear. Otherwise, he would have realized that he had nowhere to run, and that it wouldn't matter even if he did.

Ruby let Crescent Rose fall.

She got ahead of Janus, which wasn't hard, she dropped one knee to the ground. He stopped.

"I feel sorry for you. You didn't deserve to end up like that. But, at the same time, I can't help but feel some contempt. Because you could have done so much more, honored her memory, you could have _been_ so much more. But that didn't happen and for that you have nothing and no one to blame but yourself."

"You don't know what it's like to lose the one person, the _only_ one, who gives your life meaning. And yet I... I tried."

A spark of light had returned to hiseyes. Just now, as death enveloped him in her arms, ready to take him away as soon as this conversation was over. This instant suspended in time. His gaze was still clouded, but one could tell that he had come to his senses. Somewhat.

Ruby would be willing to bet that, in this moment, he looked more like himself than at any other time in the last thousands and thousands of years.

"Maybe, but it wasn't enough, anyway. You became everything you hated. I know you better than you know yourself. Better than you ever did, even. She wasn't the only reason you fought your own kind. You believed it was wrong to enslave anyone, even if they were an inferior species. The guilt was eating you up inside. She gave you a compelling reason to stop repressing those feelings, your doubts."

"I don't know if you're right. It was so long ago..."

"But for me, all that happened less than half an hour ago. That's true. For what it's worth, I'm sorry."

"What did I do wrong?"

"Everything started slipping through your fingers when you let your anger take control. That was the main problem, or so I think. " Ruby looked away. She swallowed. "But I'm just a kid. I would have handled the situation differently, of course, but better? I'm not so sure about that sort of thing anymore. I guess that's a lesson I'd have to learn sooner or later."

"Who are you?"

She looked at him again. But she didn't need to do that to know he was gone again.

"Don't you recognize me?" Ruby made a decision in a split second, flashed a forced smile.

"Ah, there you are... Eva."

Was that the real name of the human woman he'd fallen in love with, or had he just clung to another red herring in his final moments?

Ruby preferred to believe the former. In spite of everything.

Janus breathed his last, finally.

* * *

**Yes, everybody's favorite Spanish 'rapist' is back. Now there's just the epilogue left. I will post it today, very soon.**

**Well, that & a postmortem to explain the point of this story, since very few people get it, if any. I guess people stop thinking when they get offended. Shame.**


	10. Epilogue - Parting Words

**Epilogue**

_Parting words_

The white void disappeared, the darkness returned. Ruby felt a stab of panic. She imagined that Janus' weakness and his apparent death had been part of an elaborate plan that they would all suffer shortly.

It didn't take her eyes long to adjust to the darkness, however, and she realized that they had returned to her team's quarters, as if nothing had happened.

Ruby got out of bed, fumbled in the darkness with one hand to find the light switch and pressed it, turning on the light.

Then she saw that she was mistaken. There was a very obvious trace of the nightmare that had just ended, proof that it had not all been a terrible, endless, strangely coherent dream, as far as dreams went.

The Apple of Eden was more or less in the center of the room, dim, inactive. Although it should have disappeared along with the rest of the space created by Janus.

"Ruby..." Yang called to her, extended one arm in her direction. There was something strange in her voice.

She passed by.

She grabbed the Apple and stared at it as the artifact began to glow, responding to something inside her. She did not know exactly what, but she could come up with ideas, and each idea forced her to ask too many questions.

So much power at her fingertips. So much knowledge... She didn't know how, but it was one of the real Apples. Not a mere replica.

She felt a deep chill.

Janus was dead, but they hadn't escaped. Not yet, perhaps never.

"Do you have something to teach us, or will you lead us all to ruin?"

_fin_


	11. Postmortem

Here comes the postmortem.

This story is a very big fuck you directed to the react genre, not specifically to those focused on RWBY, for two main reasons:

1) The bizarre and dehumanizing way in which the authors' self-insertion interacts with the characters in the series. That is, as if they were characters, not people with their own feelings and thoughts. This doesn't happen in all the fics of this genre, but it happens enough to bother me.

That's why the plan of my own self-insertion character —although, if you've gotten this far, you know better— is not to help the characters of RWBY in an altruistic way, but to get what he wants. No more and no less. Why, in spite of the fact that, like many other characters who inserts of the author, he believes himself to be a god, he doesn't take long to show that he is in fact a pathetic and pitiful being who doesn't know what he is doing or why, not really.

Just to give an example, that the author paralyzes one or more of the characters for whatever reason, showing absolute control over them and no qualms about using it, is something I've seen in many fics and something that happens in one of the first chapters of my own fic, Shard of Glass, but for a much more twisted end.

I hope this explanation will serve as a lens to analyze the rest of the elements of the story.

Necessary?

Well, nothing is 100% necessary in anything. A better question: was it worth it? I will let those who have come this far, whether moved by morbid curiosity or genuine interest, judge for themselves.

2) React stories don't have a fucking plot, and that's something I can safely say that most of them have in common, even though I haven't read, not by a long shot, most of the fics in this genre. Why that's a problem is pretty obvious. Even this story, which I've been making up as I go along and finished with what can be considered a deus ex machina if you're not charitable enough (would feel like less of a deus ex machina if I wrote the sequel that's half-formed in my brain, but honestly, I don't feel like it), is more interesting than seeing characters react to stuff for no particular reason. In my opinion, at least.

No, averting the ending of Volume 3 doesn't count.

Anyway, it's not that hard. If you write and feel the need to write a fic of this particular genre, give my advice that should be totally unnecessary but is not a try.

That's all, folks.

See you all next time I write about my underage waifu.


End file.
